


Merry Month of May

by just_a_dram



Series: A Month of Maying [1]
Category: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-06
Updated: 2010-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 44,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May must be a most pleasant month, he concluded: a month for coupling, nesting, and singing. This was the month Time selected for Alice to return to him. As long as Alice continued to step through her looking glass, it would always be May for Hatter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Merry Month of May**

Prologue

Alice told him that she first had come back to Underland via looking glass travel in the month of May; she had climbed through from her cabin, seeing a tea party in progress and wondering why her friends could not hear her on the other side. This had left Hatter with endless curiosity about this month. He pestered her about it, asking questions so as to fathom what it was about May that had brought Alice back to him. Time was tricky and temperamental, but Above he had seen fit to send the Alice back to a Hatter Below in the month of May.

Alice, good though she was to humor him, finally tired of continuously describing May and settled on a rhyme—something she knew he would very much like, after all—as her explanation of the charming month:

"In the merry month of May

When green leaves begin to spring,

Little lambs do skip like fairies

Birds do couple, build and sing."[1]

Green was a lovely color, quite cheerful. Leaves were pleasant and could sing if properly taught. The less said about fairies the better, but lambs were particularly entertaining and their parents supplied bushels of wool for felting hats, so he could never fault them for their apparent fairy-like tendencies in May. And birds, well, he enjoyed their singing even better than tree song. May must be a most pleasant month, he concluded: a month for coupling, nesting, and singing. This was the month Time selected for Alice to return to him.

As long as Alice continued to step through her looking glass, it would always be May for Hatter.

* * *

[1] "In the Merry Month of May" is a traditional folk rhyme.


	2. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Rating: T

Chapter Rating: T

Chapter One

She never stayed long: a day or two at most and frequently just for teatime, but these were the happiest of times. He had been Deeply Disappointed when Alice had chosen to leave on Frabjous Day, but now that he knew that she _remembered_ and _would_ _come back_ , he could not bring himself to be sad every time she left. How could one be sad when one had hats to make and plans for future Alice visits churning in one's mind? She always promised to return and Alice was a great Keeper of Promises.

He was aware of the fact that his improved mood and state of mind were Much Talked About amongst his friends. The source of this improvement could be no mystery to anyone, but he had no wish for it to be.

That was a White Lie. His sovereign queen was an expert at the art of White Lies, and perhaps he had gathered some skill at them as well during his time as her Royal Hatter. Whatever the case, he knew there were aspects of his feelings for Alice that he did not care to share with the group or with Alice. _Hatter_ was happy to sit at tea with Alice and trade rhymes and riddles. _Tarrant Hightopp_ , on the other hand, was in love with Alice and dreamt of rather different things to do with Alice.

Since Alice first came back in May, Tarrant wanted to make her his Summer Queen, a position still in need of a head to wear the crown and rather preferable to the vacant throne of the Queen of Hearts, which tended to be overheated and overbearing. Sometimes he had to remind himself that she had not come back for him; she had just come back. So, it would not do to offer her the crown.

Hatter had grown accustomed to Alice appearing without notice. He no longer knocked over tables or chairs or cut himself with scissors when she appeared before him. Despite the explosion of joy he always felt in his chest, he could maintain a fairly composed air when popped in upon now. There was always the satisfaction of promptly being of service to Alice, when one was not busy binding a wound from surprised upset instead.

Alice never knew what Time it was in Underland when she stepped through the looking glass from Above. Keeping his pocket watch well buttered and free of bread crumbs was just one way he could make himself of use in case Alice appeared and needed to know whether it was teatime or not, for it was only ever clear to her if it was Night or Day.

It was _usually_ Day.

His eyes snapped open, having fallen asleep fully dressed except for his hat in his chair. A clatter from the workroom alerted him to the rather ungraceful arrival of Alice by looking glass. The room was dark, he realized with a start, and he scrambled to his feet to greet Alice.

Night arrivals could be awkward, but at least he was dressed this time. Night departures could be just as hard, as sending her back through the mirror at these hours was somehow less easy. His hands would itch at his sides, wanting to catch hold of her waist as she stepped through, so he could pull her back to him.

Poking his head out of his bedchamber, he saw Alice in a heap on the ground, a flotsam of silk skirts floating upon his workroom floor.

"Good evening, Alice," he lisped.

She rubbed her temple. "Is it evening?"

Hatter strode forward to give her his hand. Alice could _usually_ tell if it was Night.

"It was very early morning Above when I left," she said with a hiccup as he hauled her upright. Wobbling, she steadied herself against his chest by pressing her palms against him.

"Have you been drinking?" he asked suspiciously, as she continued to lean into him.

"A little," she said, righting herself and tapping him on the nose with a slender index finger. "I've been at a ball."

That would explain the expanse of skirts and hair and jewels, Hatter realized. Alice did not usually arrive so formally attired.

"Dreadfully boring," she announced, taking his hand and pulling him towards the door. "Which is why I came to see you."

Alice did not mean that she came to see Him: he would never believe such a Ridiculous Idea, mad though he was. Alice misspoke, because she was a little in her cups— _not_ her teacups.

"Where are we going?" he asked curiously.

"To court?"

"They all will be asleep," he lisped. "Unless you want to make a game of it and wake them all up one by one."

"They would most certainly be peevish with us for playing such a game," Alice reasoned.

"Oh, yes. Certainly."

"Hmm," she paused, still gripping his hand. "All dressed with no place to go."

Alice would leave. That is generally what Alice did late at night when all her friends save him were asleep. She stepped right back through the looking glass. Those were the shortest of visits.

"There are still places to go," he replied quickly.

"Yes?" she asked, brightening.

"Any number of places," he assured her. "It's a beautiful night for adventure."

Another White Lie: he had not the least idea whether this was a suitable night for adventure. He had been asleep until Alice crashed to his floor and missed what had passed of the night thus far. Cats could be raining from the sky, for all he knew, and cats were never very happy when they landed even if they _did_ manage to land on their feet. Weather of that sort could be quite perilous.

"I am in the mood for adventure," Alice said with a smile.

Was she not always, he thought with a smirk?

"Lead the way, dear Hatter."

Lead the way. Where to? He did not know, but Alice wanted adventure and there must be some to be had, so he threw open the door. _Thanks be_ , Underland did _not_ make a liar of him: it _was_ a beautiful night for adventure.

"Ah," Alice said, stepping through the door and staring up at the twinkling stars above. "You would think the stars would seem farther away Below, but they seem closer here."

Hatter did not look up at the stars, for he was familiar with their shine and sheen. No, he looked at Alice: with her head tilted slightly to the side, her graceful neck was exposed to the starlight. He placed his thimbled finger along this bare patch of skin and whispered in her ear, pointing above, "We can look at constellations if you like."

"I don't recognize any. They're not the same as Above," she said with a shake of her head, her hair brushing his hand.

He wondered if he was as transparent to her as he was to himself—a veritable Hatter stained glass window. Stargazing, indeed. An uncontainable giggle spilled forth, but he clapped a hand over his mouth to prevent it from escaping for too long.

"Are they moving?" she asked. "They look to me as if they're moving."

"Just telling their stories for the night," he lisped, leaning closer to her cheek as she stared up.

"The clearing," she said, tugging on his hand, "we can see them better from the clearing."

"Ah, yes, quite right," he said, following after her as Alice began to hurry around the Hat House, their fingers linked together.

"Come along, my Hatter," she urged him with a laugh, as they nimbly approached the clearing.

Her habit of referring to him sometimes as 'my Hatter' or even 'my dear Hatter' or best yet 'my dearest Hatter' was a source of endless pleasure. He would not mind being Alice's _anything_ , but being Her Hatter seemed infinitely preferable to so many of the alternatives.

He was not watching his feet, for he was engaged in watching the swing of Alice's hair against her neck. So, he did not spot the danger in time to warn the Champion of Underland of it or in time to perform any heroics himself. The dew was heavy upon the grass, and in Alice's fever to rush to the clearing and stare at the stars, she slipped, tumbling to the ground with an, 'Ooph!' Linked by hand as they were, Tarrant went down right with her.

Rivers of laughter bubbled from Alice's lips, but Hatter was still seized with concern. Scrambling to her side, he peered down at her. Her hair had come loose of its pins and spilled around her in the grass, her eyes crinkled with laughter and her skirts bunched around her knees.

"Are you all right, lass?" he lisped.

She clutched at her chest, trying to catch her breath.

"You haven't broken your crown, have you? Are you in need of vinegar or brown paper?"[1]

"Jack is the one to have broken his crown. I am not Jack," she managed between choking laughter.

"No, you are Alice. I thought we had established for all involved—including yourself—just who You were. Have you bumped your head and forgotten?"

She fingered her loose curls, "I've tumbled twice tonight. I fell through the looking glass, you know."

"Yes, I heard. Quite a clatter. Alice, if you don't stop this laughter immediately, I shall have to call the doctor to plaster you."

"I must be very clumsy this evening," she said, reaching up to touch his face. "I'm all right, Tarrant," she said, her giggles finally dying. "I know who I am and who you are." She patted the grass beside her, "Now, where were we? I believe you were going to tell me stories about the stars."

He swallowed hard, stiffly moving to lie beside her. When she said his name, his Real Name, a lump always developed in his throat, making it difficult to speak. Yet, lump or no, Alice was requesting a story. Mallymkun was the storyteller in his little group with a great number of stories about little girls and their travails in treacle wells, but, seeing as Mally was elsewhere, he would have to clear his throat and do His Best.

"Ahem," he said, as Alice shifted her head closer to his. He pointed above, "Tonight they're acting out the story of Malmuira and Aherne."[2]

"Is it a different story every night?" she asked, her forehead touching his.

"Yes, of course. It would get tiresome otherwise." Alice's hand found his. He blinked at the stars, trying to slow his racing pulse. They were like a pair of aces here on the ground together, leaving him the luckiest gambler in Underland.[3] "But, you have chosen a good night to observe them."

"How is that?" Alice inquired.

"This is one of my favorite stories. It was told to me by my Faither." Alice squeezed his hand, pulling it across her waist to hold it against her middle. For a moment he could think of nothing other than Alice's middle beneath their clasped hands. "Aherne was a prince of his people," he finally began, gesturing towards the constellation of Aherne. "He was fair and strong and the lasses were over fond of him, but he had not chosen a bride."

"Ooh, an untamed bachelor," Alice cooed sarcastically.

"You're saucy tonight," Tarrant said, turning his head and succeeding in bumping his nose into her cheek. Jerking back to face the night sky, he corrected her, "Aherne had simply not met a lass who understood his spirit. He needed a high spirited lass and there was not one to be had in the surface world. He had to find a bride from the Otherworld."

"From Above? Alice asked eagerly.

Hatter paused. Alice's Above was Otherland, but he was not sure if it was the Otherworld of which his Faither spoke. "Are there fairies Above?"

"In the gardens, perhaps, hiding inside the Lady Slippers."

"Your slippers are bound to get very dusty if they are kept in the garden with fairies running about," Hatter warned her. "They are not good housekeepers."

"I shall take that into advisement," Alice assured him. "But Aherne is moving across the sky," she reminded him, tapping their hands on her stomach to bring him back to the subject at hand.

"So he is," Hatter said, running his thumb over her knuckles. "Aherne went to the river, where he met with a dark lass whose hair was as black as midnight and sleek as a seal's. She took his breath away. She was beautiful and strong and dripped wet with water, as if she had emerged from the river only a moment earlier. She was not of the surface world."

"What was she?"

"Malmuira was a kelpie—a water horse that haunts the water, looking for men to seduce and drown in the water."

"That's wretched," Alice said, sounding a little angry. "What a horrible practice."

"Drowning is _never_ pleasant," he agreed wholeheartedly. "Breathing is entirely preferable."

"She didn't drown Aherne, did she?"

"No, he knew what she was, but he still could not help himself: he kissed her despite the danger."

Alice let his hand slip, and she twisted in the grass until her head was tucked against his shoulder. "She must have been very beautiful."

"The most beautiful woman Aherne had ever seen," he said with a sigh, luxuriating in the feel of her breath against his skin. Once Alice had sat on his knee when there was no seat to be had during a game of Musical Chairs, refusing to concede defeat; it had been all innocent playfulness on her part.[4] He reminded himself that _this_ was quite similarly innocent. "And he could not bear to lose her. So, before she dragged him down into the water, he tricked her and took her back to his faither's castle. He kept her there, teaching her compassion, for kelpies have none naturally."

He paused, trying to fight the urge to wrap his arm about her waist as she curled against him. "You're not watching the stars," he reminded her, so that she might move away and look back up at the sky. Alice trusted him, innocently trusted him. He needed to be worthy of her trust, but it was a challenge with her pressed alongside him.

"Listening to you tell the story is just as nice," she mumbled against him.

"I'm not really a storyteller generally. I leave the storytelling to Mally, for she has the natural talent. Talent is a precious thing. My talent is for hats and tragedy, although I am not as fond of the latter. I would rather just be a hatter," he giggled briefly, impressed by his rhyme, before continuing on with his rant. "You don't get to choose your talent though: it's merely gifted to you, so I've…"

"Tarrant," she said firmly.

Before he could tell her that he was fine or apologize for his unfocused ramblings, he was distracted by her hand snaking up his waistcoat to rest on his chest. He closed his eyes. He was more than fine.

"Did she learn compassion?"

He cleared his throat, "Aye." Damn his perfidious accent. He consciously began to work at gaining a better grip on himself.

"Did they marry?"

"That is what Aherne wanted, but he'd come to regret his tricking and taking of Malmuira, because he loved her and her high spirit. So, he gave her a choice of returning to the river or marrying him, but marrying him would only be possible if she drank of the potion that would make her forget her life Before and make it impossible for her to ever go back to the Otherworld."

"She couldn't go back?" Alice echoed.

"No," he said, looking down his nose at Alice, "not if she wanted to be with him."

"Did she go home?" Alice asked, drawing a pattern on his waistcoat.

He wanted to know what she was painting with her finger—words, pictures, feelings? He had some he would like to draw for her.

"She drank the potion. She'd come to love him as much as he loved her."[5]

Alice sat upright and pulled her knees up to her chest. "All fairytales are about beautiful women. They are given the happy endings." She paused, her finger twirling grass a little nervously. "Do you think I'm beautiful, Tarrant?" she asked quietly. "Sometimes I think you're looking at me…as if you might."

He could not see her countenance, as her hair had fallen in her face, creating a blonde curtain that blocked his view. He sat up, feeling the bread-and-butterflies begin to flutter about his stomach. He did not know how to answer her question. Of course Alice was beautiful, but she had never seemed to care about those things before, and if he confessed just how beautiful he thought she was, he would expose his Other Feelings for her. Although, based on what the lass had just said, he may have already exposed himself. He bit his tongue, preventing himself from giggling.

"Tonight I was told that I was beautiful. Do you think it was the dress?" she asked, her hands spreading over her skirts as she continued to speak into her knees.

He blinked quickly. Someone had told Alice that she was beautiful. It was not surprising that someone would think so, for she was. Alice was the loveliest of all Alices. But, who had told her? Her mother, perhaps? A gentleman?

"Who told you that, love?" he asked, trying to control the level of his voice, as the Badness began to whisper to him.

She peeked at him sideways. "They only say it when I don't look myself. That's the way of men, I suppose. Aherne would not have thought Malmuira beautiful if she had appeared to him as she really was."

It _was_ a man then. A man and Alice. His Alice. His Alice who stepped through the looking glass and curled against his side to listen to stories his Faither had told him when he was but a bairn. How could he continue to stay silent, when there were men waiting to take His Alice from him? How could he continue to act as a silly old Mad Hatter and not as the last man of the Hightopp clan, a man that by right of birth should be a Man of Action?

"Alice, Ah think ye'r beautiful ayeweys," his lips said, seized by Anger and Possession and Desire and Truth before he could silence them.

She raised her head, fixing him with a questioning look. "Were they happy?" When he failed to answer, she continued, "Malmuira and Aherne?"

"Aye, 'twas a guid match," he said, reaching up a trembling hand to touch her soft blonde curls.

"Can I tell you something I shouldn't?" Alice whispered, leaning into his touch.

He nodded, unwilling to speak with the heavy pressure of Desire weighing upon his chest and muddling his thoughts.

"Sometimes, Tarrant, I see you in my dreams."

* * *

[1] "Jack and Jill" is a nursery rhyme that at least dates to the 18th c. The rhyme was first published in the 1760s in John Newbery's _Mother Goose's Melody_. In addition to the famous first verse, there are two alternative second verses. One of these references vinegar and brown paper as a curative for a dashed head:

"Up Jack got and home did trot

As fast as he could caper;

And went to bed to mend his head

With vinegar and brown paper."

[2] Malmuira – meaning dark skinned (Sc); Aherne – meaning lord of horses (Sc)

[3] There was no Texas Hold'em in 19th c. England, but there was Three Card Brag, a game dating from the 16th c. Just as in poker, aces are high in this game.

[4] Musical Chairs (or Going to Jerusalem as it was sometimes called) at least dates to 1875 if not earlier.

[5] The kelpie is a mythological creature in Scottish and Irish tradition. They are water horses that sometimes have the ability to take human form in order to trick humans into coming into the water with them, where they are then drowned and eaten. There are many myths surrounding the rivers and lochs of Scotland involving kelpies, this is mine.

* * *

***Part 2 will be rated M. The M+ (for explicit sexual content) version will posted to my LJ account if you would rather read that.*** 


	3. Merry Month of May Chapter One, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Rating: M for sexual content

Chapter Rating: M for sexual content

An M+ version of this chapter (with explicit sexual content) is available at my LJ account (remove the spaces): just-a-dram . livejournal . com / 15086 . html

Chapter One cont.

He was unaware of how he came to wrap his arms around Alice's waist or press his lips to hers. The Badness had darkened his vision for a moment, blanking his mind to his actions. But as the touch and taste of her dawned on him like a new morning, he realized what he was doing and waited for a firm shove and a sharp slap, which he would most certainly deserve. For, he was an old Hatter and Alice was Alice. There was no comparison, nothing reasonable about his love for her, but then, he had very little Reason left. He waited, but Alice, while stiff and still for a moment, soon began to mold herself to him, her lips moving tentatively against his. He moaned into her, as her hands slipped around his neck under his coat collar.

He wanted, wanted beyond all things, Alice. He WANTED her. His hands itched with want. He had wanted her since she had come to him when he was a prisoner of the Red Queen. He had loved her since she bravely agreed to save them all, when she had finally acknowledged that she did indeed slay or would at the very least try. His chest burst with Love. He would _not_ let some other man take Alice. She would be HIS. He would erase all other men from her mind. Claim her. She kissed him back, her hands pulling at his neck: she wanted as well.

He crawled over her, knocking her back into the grass and bruising her lips with his own. She tasted of punch. The punch that had made her somewhat tipsy and made her tumble: not once, but twice. The punch that had convinced her it was a good idea to step through the looking glass in the early morning hours of Above _to see him_ —that _is_ what the lass had said. The punch that possibly encouraged her to pant with Desire, forgetting her starched upbringing for the moment.

He would see to it that Alice did not choose wrongly. That she would not choose to go Above and listen to the meaningless words of gentlemen who only liked her in her frothy ball gowns. Tarrrant would like Alice just as well _out_ of her ball gown. His hands roughly traced the outlines of her form, frustrated by the multitude of layers obscuring the softness of her breasts and the natural curve of her waist and hips.

If necessary, he would cut down the gentleman Above who had thought of Alice at all. Take his claymore and put an end to all Inappropriate Remarks about his Alice and her form. Right after he spent himself here in the dewy grass with her.

"Whase dream are we in now, luve?" he growled, nipping at her ear.

Her response was an 'O,' as he sucked at her neck, harder than he should, hard enough to mark her as His. He would mark her elsewhere before he was finished. _If_ no man had done so already, he would cure her of her virginity. Either way, he would have her. Reaching down, he grabbed fistfuls of her voluminous skirts and hauled them up to her waist, exposing her stockings and knickers to his sight. These were the loveliest ankles, calves, knees, and thighs he had ever laid eyes upon, just as he had imagined they would be. Kneeling over her, he struggled to rid himself of the confines of his coat. Alice's hand trailed down his waist, finding a home at his hip, as she watched him with wide brown eyes, gone dark with arousal.

"Tarrant," she whispered, as he tossed his coat aside. "Do you dream of me? Like this?"

He groaned, as he tore at his bowtie, trying to loosen it, so that he might draw breath. Did he dream of her? When he began to think of all that he had dreamt, imagined, desired, with her now here below him, he wondered at what he might choose to do first, what fantasy he might like to fulfill. "Dream o' ye? Ower much, lassie," he confessed.[1]

She smiled hesitantly and mouthed a ghost of a response: "Good."

There was more he would like to confess to, but at the moment he desperately wanted to show her. He would show her what it could be like between a man and a woman. Show her that they too could be a good match even if he was afraid to believe it himself. Show her that she was the lass that understood his spirit, and he held hers in the greatest esteem.

He stroked her cheek, smoothing his finger over the flush that had bloomed there. "Bonnie, lass. Sweet, bonnie Alice," he said in awe of her, of them, of this.

Alice took his hand and pressed it to her breast, where he could feel her heart fluttering rapidly. "I'm…" she began without finishing her thought.

"Lillie, luesome, lustie," he finished for her, indulging in things that began with the letter 'L'—his momentary inspiration.[2]

His beautiful Alice lay before him under the starry sky, making needy sounds, her fingers digging into his back through his shirt and waistcoat. His hands skated over her excessively decorated form once more.

"Alice," he purred, tugging at her lip with his teeth and then soothing it with his tongue.

His heart hammered unevenly as her tongue shyly met his and her legs shifted beneath him.

"Guid?" he murmured against her lips.

"Yes," she gasped.

Tarrant needed Alice, Needed her now. Inside of her, making her his, showing her what he could not find the words to say. _Now_.

The voices were chanting to him: now, Now, NOW! But looking down into her dilated eyes, another less brash voice reminded him that he needed to take care. Alice was apparently inexperienced.

"Do you want me to stop?" he panted.

 _Blithering idiot_ , one of his voices cursed him for his restraint.

Her head tossed slightly against the grass. His name voiced by Alice's lips was the last thing he heard as the blood rushed in his ears, drowning out all other sounds…

This really was Alice. Not just _the_ Alice, but truly His Alice now. He would no longer need to hide Tarrant's feelings behind the Hatter's frozen smile. Alice understood him. They were a pair, joined together. One day the stars above would tell _their_ story. Romantic, old fool, he thought, throatily chuckling into Alice's brow.

He would do _anything_ to please her. He would devote five lifetimes to learning what gave her pleasure. This—her pleasure—might have been his greatest accomplishment.

He collapsed, breathing heavily on top of her besmirched skirts. Lacing his hand in the hair at her temple, which was now damp with perspiration, he pressed a kiss to her forehead, slowly coming to his senses.

The remaining rational part of his mind had reason to pause. "Did I hurt you?" he asked in a puff.

"I couldn't say," Alice mumbled, sounding as if she was not yet quite back in Underland but still adrift in a land of their making.

If she did not immediately come back down, Tarrant could understand, for he had never known such a pleasant place in his life. But, he might have been selfish in taking Alice there unawares as he had done. "I should have warned you," he said with some remorse. "But it won't always hurt," he promised before rolling off of her. The next time would be better for her. He smiled to himself: confident Hatter, he was already thinking _of the_ _next time_.

"Tarrant," she murmured, turning her head in the grass to look at him. "I never dreamt it like this. I didn't know." Her slow smile assured him that whatever she had discovered could not have been all bad.

He lay there beside her, staring up at the still moving stars, playing out the silent story of Malmuira and Aherne. The woods beside them were not silent, however. He could hear the chatter of birds. It was still May, a springtime for him after a lengthy winter. It must be May, for Alice had come back and the birds were coupling, just as he and Alice had kissed and toyed. A lark was announcing the approach of day with his morning song. He frowned. The lark was not the only bird of the forest present. There was a cuckoo in their midst.

"Miserable shukm guddler," he cursed under his breath.[3]

"What is it?" Alice asked, rolling on her side and pillowing her head on folded hands.

"Do you hear the cuckoo?"

Alice paused, listening for the 'goo-ko' call. "Yes, I hear it."

"I wish he would away," he grumbled, as he reached down and began to tuck himself back into his trousers.

"He is not a friend of yours?" Alice asked with an arched brow.

"Certainly not. Cuckoos are nothing like Hightopps. They are nothing like _you_ , Alice. I do not care for the cuckoo to have heard us…"

Alice hurriedly sat up, her face going pale. "You think that someone heard us?" she asked, her voice quavering, as she struggled to straighten her skirts and cover her knees. "Will the cuckoo speak of this?" she continued, her voice rising.

He righted himself. "Cuckoos are such notorious rotters, Alice, no one listens to anything that a cuckoo might have to say."[4]

"Will the flowers?" she asked, sounding almost hysterical.

"There are no flowers around, lass," he said, glancing around the moonlit clearing.

Tears began to spill down Alice's face and Tarrant felt himself go quite cold. He had done or said something wrong. Tracing back through his labyrinthine mind to find the source of her upset would be quite Time consuming and Time dreaded being gobbled up.

Watching her manic movements, he reached out to peel her hands from her waist, where they had begun to clutch at her middle, so that he might stroke them and calm her. She pushed his hands away, shaking. Chastised, he clasped them in his lap.

"My apologies," he lisped.

"You must not tell anyone, Tarrant," she said, her hands wrapping around her middle once more. "You mustn't tell _anyone_ what we've done."

He swallowed. It was not his practice to tell tales. It was ungentlemanly, unchivalrous, ungallant, and unconscionable. And yet, the chill creeping up his spine told him that Alice meant something quite different. Alice wanted to Pretend. The worst kind of pretending: the kind that he was quite familiar with, the kind that sometimes seemed like a cure but was more often a poison. Alice wanted to Pretend that It had never happened.

"If anyone found out, I could not go home," she begged.

The side of his mouth twitched. _Whit a remarkably pleasant way o' keeping th' lass 'ere wi' ye_.

"I could never go home, Tarrant," she said, her tears coming more quickly. "Never."

He reached out a tentative hand to touch her shoulder. Though he trembled for fear of rejection, he feared her tears more. "It's alright, lass. You'll go home to your family," he assured her, his voice wavering. "Right through the looking glass and back you go." What right did he have to keep Alice from her family? Did he think taking her innocence gave him a claim to her? Slurvish man.[5] Slurvish, self-indulgent man.

"If our friends knew, Tarrant…I could not come back _here_ either."

He nodded. Alice wanted to have a Secret between the two of them. Not the kind of Secret he would like to share with her, but the alternative was No Alice. "I shan't tell a soul," he promised.

Alice took his hand from her shoulder and pressed his open palm to her lips. "My dearest Hatter," she mumbled gratefully.

He had been more to her, he was certain, for just a moment, and now being Her Hatter did not sound quite so sweet.[6]

* * *

[1] _ower_ – over, 'too' when combined with an adjective or adverb (Sc)

[2] _lillie_ – lovely (Sc); _luesome_ – loveable (Sc); _lustie_ – lustful (Sc)

[3] _shukm_ – excrement; _guddler_ – thief

[4] Tarrant does not like cuckoos, because they are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and then the cuckoo chick either kicks the other chicks or eggs from the nest when it hatches. This behavior was first described by Edward Jenner, who was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1788 for this work.

[5] _slurvish_ – selfish

[6] The events in this chapter are inspired by two poems about birds spying lovers. The first is Thomas Dekker's "The Merry Month of May," which was originally published in 1600:

"THE month of May, the merry month of May,

So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!

O, and then did I unto my true love say,

Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer's Queen.

Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale,

The sweetest singer in all the forest quire,

Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love's tale:

Lo, yonder she sitteth, her breast against a brier.

But O, I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo;

See where she sitteth; come away, my joy:

Come away, I prithee, I do not like the cuckoo

Should sing where my Peggy and I kiss and toy.

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,

So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;

And then did I unto my true love say,

Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer's Queen."

...

The second is the ballad, "The Birds Noats," by C.H. from volume six of _The Roxburghe ballads_ by William Chappell:

"In the merry month of May when prety Birds do sing,

With chirping and with sugared noats to welcome in the Spring,

It was my chance to walk abroad into the fields so gay

Where many a prety Lad and Lass was then gathering May.

John met with Besse betimes before the break of day,

And hand in hand to _Lambeth_ fields they nimbly took their way:

The grass being somthing slippery then this couple down they fell,

But what they said before they rose O the prety Lark can tell!...

You Country Lads and Lasses von think for to go free!—

You have more twatling Birds I'm sure than near the City be:

You gather May as well as we and Time you have also

To tumble on the grass so green and this the Birds do know"


	4. Merry Month of May Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M for adult concepts

Rating: M for adult concepts

Chapter Two

Alice sat staring blankly at the wall of the furnished apartment in which she was being kept until they set sail for their next port of call. She studiously avoided the glare of the looking glass that stood to her right, carefully carried according to her orders from her cabin in the ship, just as it had been carried ever since she had discovered that this was her route to Underland whenever she should choose. The looking glass called to her, as it had done earlier when she had returned to her chamber after the ball, tipsy and contemplative. It seemed always to be calling to her lately, urging her to pop through—just to see what he was doing, just to check in.

"Looking glasses cannot call to a person," Alice mused aloud for the walls' benefit. Looking glasses might facilitate speedy travel, but they had never yet spoken to her. If she was more often thinking of Underland or thinking of him, it was because that was the turn of her mind, not the fault of a magical looking glass urging her to do so.

How could she not think of him after she had begun to notice some time ago that he was thinking of her, looking at her, silently saying something he could not bring himself to voice? Her sympathy for her friend brought her to dwell on what this could possibly mean and what she might feel in return. Was it mad to feel for a Mad Hatter anything other than friendship?

Friends do not do what we just did, Alice thought, looking down at her skirts. They were stained: stained with punch from the party, stained with grass from the meadow, and stained with something else that made her blush hotly. She dared not look at her knickers, for she feared she would find blood there. How was she going to hand this over to her maid? It was a tapestry of her uncatalogued sins.

 _Wanton woman_ , a voice hissed.

Alice flopped back onto the bed, her arms coming above her head. She was one of _those_ women now: unvirtuous, tainted, damaged goods. Someone who would give themselves—unmarried, unbetrothed, without even a promise of love—outside, on the ground, and in the grass. Her heart began to race as it had when he had crawled atop her, and she pressed her hand over her bosom, trying to urge the organ to slow for fear of being found dead in her besmirched dress. She had given herself to Tarrant Hightopp without two sane thoughts to rub together, without an inkling that this was perhaps not the best course of action.

If that British Colonel of the 4th Bombay Grenadiers had not been so handsome and flirtatious, speaking to her of her beauty, she might not have begun to dwell on the fate awaiting her when she returned home to England. One could brush off a gentleman or two. One could even divest oneself of a Hamish if one had a great deal of muchness. But, eventually she would be made to choose: end up an old maid like Aunt Imogene or marry. Her mother would urge marriage on her, when she returned home. There would be no avoiding it. If that gentleman had not put her thoughts spinning, she might not have gazed into the looking glass and begun to consider her alternatives.

What if she disappeared to Underland? What if she stepped through the looking glass and investigated things that began with the letter 'H'? There were a few at the top of her list, like Hatter and Hightopp. She was curious, after all, what he felt for her. She wondered whether he _loved_.

Alice moved a blind hand to feel for her pillow. Finding it, she pulled it over her eyes, blocking out the early rays of dawn that were already peeking through her window.

 _Well, now I know he desires. That much I have at least investigated._

…

" _Ye'r late!_ " Thackery shouted, as Hatter took his seat at the table.

"Better late than never," Hatter observed a little gloomily.

"Never late is better," Mally advised. "He's been tossin' biscuits to beat the band. With you bein' late there's no one but me to dodge 'em."

"I was quite occupied," he lisped lightly by way of explanation, reaching for a teapot and pouring himself a cup.

"Makin' hats?" Mally asked conversationally, as she scampered atop the table.

He dipped a finger in his cup, testing the warmth. The tea had already gone cold—punishment for being late. Time would not let even these little infractions pass unnoticed. "Occupied," he responded vaguely.

"Yer hair is damp," Thackery stated calmly, scratching under his chin with his right paw.

"It rained on my way here." Did that qualify as a White Lie? Or merely a Lie? It took place in a white enamel tub, which might be a useful detail in sorting this out.

"It didn't rain here," Mally protested.

"Very isolated rain, just above my head," he explained.

"What goes up when the rain comes down?" Mally asked, nearly tipping over an already cracked teacup.[1]

"I hadn't an umbrella handy," he said, tapping the table with a thimbled fingertip.

"Your hands are pruned," Mally observed, as she dragged a sugar bowl within reach of her place setting.

Hatter gazed down at his hands, gone wrinkly from extended bathing. "Yes, quite."

"Raisins!" Thackery shouted.

"I don't care for raisins in my scones," Mally disagreed, sticking a sugar cube with her hatpin and flipping it into her teacup. "But I wouldn't mind some treacle."

"Ah, I was just thinking of your treacle well stories last night," Hatter said, glad for the change in subject and turning his hands before his face, examining the odd way skin plumps in water. "Thinking on what a superior teller of stories you are."

Both Mally's treacle well stories and his bath put him in mind of Alice. If he was thinking of her, he might speak about her, and he could not mention Alice having visited last night. So, he reached for a crumpet and shoved it wholly in his mouth. There was no way he could speak of it now.

"Alice doesn't think much of my stories," Mally said with a sniff.

Hatter tilted his head, widening his eyes. He wanted to say—"Alice prefers stories about kelpies and princes. They make her quite amorous."—but the crumpet served its purpose, keeping his mouth too full to talk. Thackery's crumpets were not only tasty, but exceptionally useful.

"I have a new story about oyster shells that I can spin for you after tea," Mally offered, but Thackery began violently pulling at his ears at her suggestion.

"He doesn't lik' oyster shells. Reminds him o' prison!" the Hare shouted.[2]

"Oh, he should be over that by now," Mally griped. "There's _sensitive_ and then there's _too sensitive_ , you know. It would be a shame to ruin a good oyster shell story on account of it. It's not as if he always takes _my_ sensitivities into account."

Thackery twitched his nose twice, tossed a spoon at Hatter, and began to mutter quietly, "Alice, Alice, Alice."

"Precisely," Mally said, walking a teaspoon around her teacup to stir it.

Chewing around the sizable mouthful of food, Hatter continued to examine his hands. Alice insisted on his taking better care of them, and who was he to disagree? As a result, they had taken on a more pampered appearance of late, but now they were decidedly pruned. It had been necessary to bathe before he delivered his store of hats to Marmoreal this afternoon and came to tea. He had smelled of Alice, and if he would have come before his friends smelling of Alice, it would have betrayed their Secret, which he had faithfully promised to keep. If in fact other people even knew Alice's smell the way he did, which he could not be certain, because he was an Expert in all things Alice and no longer sure of what qualified as General Alice Knowledge or Specialty Knowledge. One could not take a chance, however.

All the same, he had delayed the bathing until the last minute, so he could keep Alice on him. For Alice might not want to _remember_ anymore, and he was no longer certain she _would come back_.

…

Alice began to undress as she waited for the maid to return with the water she had requested be drawn for a bath. Her fingers shook as she worked at the buttons, laces, and ribbons of her clothing. In her current state, she could use some assistance with the undressing of her person, but she could not chance the maid noticing the sorry state of her attire. She had only just managed to remove all the various layers of vice and slipped into her dressing gown when the maid returned with the last bucket of water.

"Ready, Miss," the serving girl called, sloshing the last of the water into the tub.

Alice came from behind the screen and moved towards the tub, smiling thinly in thanks for the maid's efforts on her behalf.

"Will you be needin' anything else, Miss?"

"No," Alice said, stepping into the tub and pulling the dressing gown up so that it did not trail in the water. "That is all, thank you."

She was about to slip the dressing gown from her shoulders, when she saw the maid move towards the dressing table chair, where Alice had folded her dress and underclothes.

"No!" she called out a little desperately.

The maid looked back at her as if Alice was suffering from an acute case of madness. The poor girl would not be the first to come to that conclusion.

"I'm just takin' them to be washed, Miss. I'll bring 'em back to you good as new," she assured Alice as her hands reached for the gown.

"Just leave them there," Alice said, trying to sound cheerful and unconcerned.

The maid straightened up. "You're sure, Miss?"

"Yes, thank you."

The girl sighed, "All right, Miss. You call me if you need anything."

The door closed and Alice tossed the dressing gown aside before sliding into the water. Alice's gaze skittered to the soiled dress and underclothes draped across the dressing table chair. She would have to try to scrub them herself in this tub after she was done with her bath. How she was going to explain sopping wet articles of clothing strung about her apartments, she had no idea. Nevertheless, it was better than the alternative—trying to explain the origin of the stains to a gossiping servant.

Alice stared into the water of the tub, swirling her fingers in it and watching the ripples that flowed from them. She sunk further down until her breasts were covered. Somehow she needed to cool herself, for she felt as if she was burning from the inside out. Set afire in a way she had not known was possible. If it would have been possible to get doused in the rain, she would have hurried out, but the sky had not humored her with a morning shower today. It never rained when one wanted it to, she mused, whispering:

"Rain on the green grass;

Rain on the tree;

Rain on the housetop,

But not on me!"[3]

No rain, so she had to resort to a cooling bath. This perhaps was for the best, since she needed to wash Tarrant off of her. Closing her eyes, she attempted to prevent the images from floating back to her. The soreness between her legs was reminder enough. She wanted to put a stop to the Memory of the way he had made her feel, touching her where she had never dared touch herself. Her body had become a stranger to her now that she knew there were aspects of it Tarrant could pleasurably manipulate that she had never even thought to ponder. Her hands gripped the cool smoothness of the rim of the tub. How she had gone from mortified with her behavior to wishing she could feel him again in such a short span of time, Alice did not know.

She was, it would seem, in need of a thorough scolding. "Alice Kingsleigh, put a stop to these thoughts, _immediately_!" Nothing good could come of wanting…

Alice's heart stopped, her eyes opening wide with dawning realization. The price of _having already wanted_ could be higher than she had first imagined.

…

Tarrant flopped back half undressed on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The ceiling grew tired of looking back down at him, however, so he grabbed for his hat on the side table and placed it over his head, blocking out the moonlight that was already beginning to seep through his windows.

The Memory of the previous night had haunted him all Day and showed no signs of decamping in the Night. Though the Memory was agreeable— _more than agreeable_ , he thought as his body threatened to betray him—the Questions that danced around it in a frenzied circle were not as agreeable.

What had brought Alice through the looking glass in such a mood, open to all sorts of suggestive suggestions?

Curiosity? Alice was a curious girl. Scratch that—curious woman. What they did could merely come down to a broadening of Experience. He would have felt used, except for the fact that he had a niggling worry that _he had done the using_. He was a male; it was easy enough to lay the blame there. Perhaps he had taken advantage of Alice's endless curiosity.

Had Alice even Wanted him or was that his Badness playing tricks on him?

He had asked—yes, he was certain of it—whether he should stop, but had she actually answered? Not that he recalled. She had tossed her head in an approximation of what he had taken in the moment to be a response in the negative, but conceivably he had only wanted to believe that had been her answer. Perhaps the Badness had blinded him to the Truth of it, which would help explain why Alice had begun to panic and cry afterward.

Why would Alice insist on pretending that It had never happened?

He began to count on his fingers, touching the tips of them although he could not see them, blinded as he was by his hat.

One. He had taken advantage of her. Who would want to remember that?

Two. He had hurt her. She had not fully answered him, when he questioned her on that point. That smile he took as encouragement was merely Alice trying not to be Rude. She took manners very seriously, after all.

Three. He had chosen his timing very poorly. Alice was not a peasant girl. What had been thinking giving Alice a green gown?[4] He had not been thinking with his head; addled as it was, he almost certainly could have trusted it to know enough not to knock Alice in such an undignified manner.[5] Alice had every right to be affronted by his degradation of her.

Four. He was mad, a Mad Hatter. It was a rather sorry thing to be connected with a Mad Hatter, who could not always keep track of his Thoughts and quite often lost his Temper. A Hatter who had fallen on hard times no less. He had a musty house and no more than a tuppence to his name. Her family would Disapprove, for what family would not?

Five. He was a mad, poor, OLD MAN. Ancient if he counted all the years he had been frozen in Time.

He got to 'six' and lacked a sixth finger on his left hand to count, a digit he had never thought to desire, but did now as something very critical occurred to him. Six, he thought, tapping an invisible sixth finger. He had not told her that he loved her, and he did, desperately. Yet, that word—love—had not tripped off the tongue in the moment. He had thought it, certainly, but not said it. It went untold.

Alice might never come back. He might never have the chance.

…

A voice called to Hatter from outside of his hat. He could not be sure whether the voice was small or just muffled, but it seemed to be calling his name, his proper name. The only way to be sure was to take a peek. He lifted up the brim of his hat slightly, but the darkness of his bedchamber only made it clear that a figure in white stood before him.

"Are you a specter?" he asked.

"I don't think so," the voice answered, an Alice voice.

He sat up rather abruptly, wincing as his hat fell to the ground. He had fallen asleep, but perhaps he was asleep still. For surely Alice was not standing in his bedchamber in her nightgown.

"Your hair is wet." He wondered why that was the first thing he said to her. He was certain there was something vital, which had nothing to do with hair, he had intended on telling her if she ever came back. His mind ticked through a myriad of options, beginning at the beginning—a very good place to start. An apology, avowal, admission, assurance, affirmation? He could not be sure: his mind had gone blank. Blank, bare, barren…

"It was raining," she said, putting her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels.

Hatter frowned. Why was Alice strolling barefoot in her nightgown out in a rainstorm? That seemed like a very Bad Practice. Amusing, perhaps, but also an invitation to the Sniffles, who never required much of an invitation to arrive as it was.

"It's night again," she said, looking towards his open window.

"So it is." _Say something useful, old man!_

"I'm sorry to disturb you."

"You need not ever apologize for coming here, Alice," he lisped.

"I came, because I have something particular to ask you…" she began, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Best ask about the particulars then," he replied as brightly as he could muster. "Out with it quick."

"What will we do if I…" Alice tried again, but she paled, shivering.

He tilted his head, contemplating her with compassion. "Alice, you'll catch a cold," he said, pulling back the corner of his bedcovers and shifting to make room for her. "Wet hair and looking glass travel are not fair companions."

She hesitated, and he wondered if offering her harbor in his bed was too forward or too familiar or much too friendly, or whether tonight was merely a night for investigating things that began with the letter 'F'.

He patted the bed again, seeing her resolve waver:

"Little Nan Etticoat  
In a white petticoat  
And a red nose,  
The longer she stands,  
The shorter she grows."[6]

"Red noses are _extremely_ unattractive," he added persuasively.

"My feet _are_ cold," she admitted.

"Of course they are. They're bare, and you went walking in the rain. They think _I'm_ mad," he scolded her, as she climbed into his bed and pulled the covers up over herself.

"It didn't really rain," she confessed, scooting down until her head met the pillow. "I was in such a hurry that I didn't towel my hair and I grabbed the first thing close at hand to wear before coming through the glass," she said, brushing at the neck of her nightgown.

Her hand at her neck drew his attention to a bruise, which he realized with a start he had put there. He had wanted to mark the lass and he had with a luve-bite. There was no pride in having marked Alice's milky white skin; if there was a way to smooth away the redness with tenderness, he would begin immediately.

"It didn't really rain here either," he said, acknowledging his own White Lie if indeed it was not simply a Lie. Of course, he realized, she was not privy to that untruth, silly Hatter.

"Tarrant," she said, reaching for his hand, "what will we do if I am with child?"

His mouth came slightly unhinged and hung limp for a moment. He had not known what to expect from an Alice Visit at this hour of the night after what had passed between them under the stars, but he had not expected the lass to pin him with this Question. His teeth clacked back together with a snap that almost caused him some dental distress. Alice and her muchness: he would never cease to be amazed by it.

He swallowed, his mouth suddenly gone very dry. _What a Notion!_ Alice with his bairn.[7] His hands itched to press themselves to her flat stomach and span the narrowness. _Dinna think on it, lad_.

Looking down at their clasped hands, he tried to formulate the proper words. Curious Alice would not likely be satisfied with, 'You won't be.' He cleared his throat, "A man knows how to ensure that will not be the case. Your skirts…"

Realization slowly dawned on Alice's face. "Oh!" she exclaimed, continuing more quietly, "my skirts."

Tarrant felt a bit chagrined with himself in that regard: he was generally involved in the creation of beautiful things not the destruction of them. "Yes, my apologies about that."

"Better my skirts," Alice mused.

Hatter giggled a little nervously. Yes, besmirched skirts could be more easily disregarded than a swollen belly.

Alice contemplated something in silence before covering a yawn with the back of her hand. "I haven't slept yet."

"Sleep," he said without thinking. His free hand impulsively moved to stroke Alice's brow. "Stay," he said a little pathetically.

Her eyes slipped closed with a ghost of a smile. "I should go back," she whispered.

"In the morning," he suggested gently, "not much time will have passed Above." Alice had dark circles under her eyes that worried him.

Her eyes opened and she turned her head on the pillow to consider him. "Do you know any more stories, Tarrant?"

"Aye."

"Will you tell me another, please?" she requested, as she rolled on her side and adjusted the pillow beneath her cheek.

"Aye. Whatever ye wish, lass."

* * *

[1] Answer: an umbrella.

[2] In _Through the Looking Glass_ , Alice is told by Haigha that Hatta is just out of prison, where he was fed nothing but oyster shells.

[3] This is a verse sometimes presented as the second verse to "It's Raining It's Pouring," but it is actually a very old, traditional verse that is merely connected by the theme of rain.

[4] 'Giving a green gown' was Victorian slang for shagging (ie. getting a dress grassy).

[5] 'Knock' is also Victorian slang for shagging.

[6] This is a nursery rhyme riddle. The answer is: a candle. It appeared in _Traditional Nursery Songs of England with Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists,_ edited by Felix Summerly (1843).

[7] _bairn_ – child (Sc)


	5. Merry Month of May Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M for adult concepts

Rating: M for adult concepts

Chapter Three

Alice came back. Often. This was a monumental relief to Tarrant, although he knew he had to watch himself. He could not ever cross the line with her again, and he could not let on with their friends that they had ever crossed that line. Some days this was easier than others. Some days he wanted nothing more than to taste her lips once more. Others he was able to play at Mad Hatter's tea party with the skill of a Royal Actor in the Queen's Theatre.

Today he was uncertain which person he was. _Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!_ [1] This morning he had woken up as a man obsessed with thoughts of Alice's lips, hands, and thighs. He had fisted his hands in the sheets as he buried his face in the pillow, trying not to thrust against the mattress tick as his mind was assaulted by memories of being enveloped by Alice. Being with her had reignited desires that had long since been set aside, and now he was desperate to submerge them again.

Sometimes he imagined that she was gazing at him from across the tea table with a look that was not quite Innocent. Sometimes he imagined that she too might think about that night under the stars without regret. Those were dangerous things to imagine; those were merely Tricks his eyes were playing on him; those thoughts could make him act Foolish.

Sometimes she looked quite livid when she came through the glass.

"If I am spoken to in that _patronizing_ manner One. More. Time."

"You will treat them to a rhyme?" Tarrant sniggered.

Alice balled her hands and looked as if she might stomp her foot. She would not be amused to know he found her frustration so utterly adorable, so long as that frustration was not directed at him, for he knew Alice Wrath to be a fearsome thing. As it was, however, it made him want to tickle her and plant kisses on her cheeks and chin until she could not help but smile.

"Tarrant," she said somewhat strictly.

Ah, Alice was Schoolmistress Alice this afternoon, he thought. Now he had only left to determine who He was.

"Yes, Alice?"

"Sometimes I think I would rather not be engaged in trade if it means…" Alice trailed off with a frown.

Tarrant had entertained a similarly sacrilegious thought—and wondered from whence it had come—after a heated argument this morning with a temperamental flamingo over a hat request.

"Those men were being Impossible, Tarrant. They simply refused to listen to reason because I am a woman."

Men. Men and Alice. All thoughts of tickling and giggling drained out of his ears. He was forced to set aside the hat he had been working on so as to focus on the wretched image that had sprung up in his mind.

"Why are _your_ eyes going yellow?" she demanded a little peevishly, as she snatched up the discarded hat and turned it round in her hands, inspecting the trimmings with a blind eye. "They weren't talking down to _you_."

"Ah dinna like tae hear ye bin treated badly," he confessed.

Alice sighed loudly, as she tossed the hat back down on the worktable. "It was dealt with, and I am told that I must become accustomed to such things." She shook her head. "Never mind. Suffice to say: I needed to get away." She softly smiled, reaching across the table to rest her hand on his arm. "Have I made a rhyme?"

"Aye."

"Excellent," Alice said, coming around the table and lifting herself onto it. "That is a good beginning, because I need to be cheerful."

For a moment he could think of nothing but her skirts brushing his legs as her feet dangled from the table.

"I can be cheerful," he lisped quietly, having come back to himself.

"I was quite counting on that. Do you know what I would like?" Alice asked, swinging her legs.

Whatever it was, he would try to make it so. Games, riddles, rhymes? "What would you like?" he asked. Kissing, touching, toying?

Her heels clicked together, and Tarrant fought an urge to grab her ankle to stop it from swinging and feel the stocking clad limb clasped between his fingers.

"For the rest of the day I have no wish to be serious, no wish to be told what to do, and no wish to think of numbers."

"Not even to count to ten?" he asked, wondering if he must now abandon the Idea that had come to him.

"That does not sound _too_ taxing. What did you have in mind?" she asked.

"Tig perhaps? The Tweedles were asking me only two hats ago to join them in a game. Tig for two is not much fun, so they tell me."[2]

"You turned them down even though the addition of you would have made it tig for three."

He tilted his head, considering, "There were hats to be made. But, now you are here."

"So, tig for four?" Alice inquired.

"Infinitely cheerful," he asserted, waggling his brows.

He could not help himself: he grabbed her ankle, stopping its swing. He held it fast for a moment, but Alice gave a little kick, freeing herself with a defiant smile.

"Sounds like just the thing, then. Put your hats aside and let us away."

Alice's laughter rang across the field. It was the loveliest of sounds. Was it wrong to feel a little boastful about the fact that those Above made Alice tetchy, but here Below she was filled with laughter? He stood stock still, entranced for a moment by the sound and the notion of Alice's Happiness, until he was nearly knocked over by the crashing grab of the Tweedles about his knees. One could not afford to stand still during an animated game of tig, he belatedly remembered. They packed a solid wallop when they made contact with him. He wobbled slightly, grabbing his hat. He smirked when he saw that Alice was nearly doubled over now in her laughter.

"Laugh away, Alice," he called to her.

"You are 'it' now," Dum informed him, since the Hatter continued to stand dumbly.

Her cheeks were flushed. She looked young and alive. She looked happy. It made him want to kiss her—desperately.

"Contrariwise, you have been 'it' since we touched you," Dee wheedled.

"That's what I said!" Dum insisted.

"You said _'it' now_ and now he's been it since then," Dee said with a frown.

"Yes, yes," Hatter said, straightening his hat. "You have until the count of ten," he announced, as he closed his eyes and began to count aloud.

Finishing his counting, Tarrant opened his eyes and spun around. The boys were busy hiding behind a tree that was much too small to conceal their rotund shapes and Alice was half way across the field, crouched behind a boulder and given away by her black patents peeking out.

"Might as well run," he shouted, "I can see all three of you as clear as day."

The Tweedles shrieked at this information, rushing from behind their tree towards Alice.

"Hatter, no!"

"No, Hatter!"

"Hatter, yes!" Tarrant called out, making quick progress in catching up to them.

Alice stood from behind the boulder, momentarily thrown by the approaching bedlam of the waddling shrieking boys.

"Save us, Champion!" the boys cried in unison, for once in perfect agreement.

By the time the Tweedles had waddled up to Alice, she had regained her muchness and obligingly took their hands. Safety in numbers was never truly a sane tactic in tig, Tarrant thought, laughing as he dashed towards the rather slow moving threesome. While Alice would have done better to ditch her hysterical chubby companions, she was a Champion and did not abandon those in need. As soon as he was within arm's reach of the group, the boys felt no shame in abandoning Alice, however, scattering in two different directions. This desertion left Alice alone, scrambling to move past him with a quick dodge to his left, but not quick enough.

"No!" Alice squealed as Tarrant grabbed her about the waist.

Locking his arms around her waist, he spun and pulled her off her feet. Alice went limp as a rag doll in his arms, laughing and clutching at his hands. His mind flashed to this morning. Of how he had finally given into the urge to touch himself and imagined Alice doing the touching.

He dropped her to the ground in a graceless heap.

"Pardon me," he said, striding off.

Sometimes he thought Alice might….

Most of the time he reminded himself that he was Mad.

…

Alice stood above deck, peering up into the clouds. They seemed to be making faces at her, teasing her even. One smiled, another laughed, and this one was winking. She could not fathom why they were so jolly. She certainly was not.

Her trip to Underland had been extraordinarily abbreviated. What could she do when Tarrant had run from her in the middle of a game? He had dropped her to the ground as if she had burnt him and then strode back to the palace as fast as his legs could carry him despite her shouts of concern. Yes, he was mad, but Tarrant was not in the habit of running _from_ her. Going back through the glass had been her only mortified option.

Without really knowing the why of it, Alice always came through to Underland from her looking glass to a location that was close to Tarrant. If he was at the Hat House, she came through to his workroom. If he was at the palace in his private chamber, that is where she arrived. If he was hatting in his workroom in the palace, she found herself standing amongst his fabric and trim and hats. If he was at the Hare House for tea, she tumbled through to the wreck of a room in the Windmill the March Hare occasionally called home.

Now that she had stepped back through the glass from Underland, she no longer pondered the patronizing treatment she had received from the men she met along her travels. Now she thought on the Royal Hatter and his peculiar behavior. She wondered whether things would ever be the same between them again.

The older gentleman who was also traveling on behest of the company joined her on the deck, standing silently at her side for several minutes before breaking her reverie.

"Miss Kingsleigh?"

"Yes, Mr. Howard?" she said, tearing her eyes from the shifting clouds.

"We'll be making Batavia in an hour or so."[3]

"So soon?" Time was doing funny things today. "It feels as if we only left port an hour ago." Another port would mean another round of aggravations.

"The winds have been fortuitous, I suppose," he said, examining his pocket watch.

Alice's pulse quickened at the sight. It is just a pocket watch, she reminded herself. Every man has one.

"The captain assures me that we will make port before nightfall. Listen, Miss Kingsleigh, I would prefer we not dawdle aboard. Are your things together?" he asked, tucking his watch back away.

"Yes." They had not even been unpacked. "I am ready to go ashore if that is your wish."

"If we go ashore with some promptness, I can have a meeting this evening over dinner."

"I'm nothing if not prompt," Alice said with a smile that she hoped would hide the real tenor of her comment.

He looked over his wire rim glasses at her. "Hmm, yes, you are. Your time will be your own, Miss Kingsleigh, once we are ashore. I won't need you until after breakfast."

Of course not, Alice was tempted to spit back. After the meeting had gone so incredibly poorly earlier today, Mr. Howard was unlikely to entrust her with much responsibility for the next week at least. As if it was her fault that men were so Impossible. There was no point, however, in arguing with Mr. Howard. The man seemingly found it ridiculous that he was charged with a young female apprentice on this trip and his employer's fondness for the girl was clearly the only thing keeping him from stating that opinion outright. She would make no headway with him. She had tried in the past and failed: Jabberwocky slaying skills did not exactly parallel persuading unimaginative, middle class, male merchants from Middlesex to actually Hear her.

"I'll see you on the docks, then, Mr. Howard," Alice said by way of response.

He nodded, and Alice took her leave, moving below deck to her cabin.

Things were going poorly Above and Below. "Glorious," she grumbled to herself as she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs. "Horrid man," she added for good measure.

Sometimes she thought that restraint was the last thing she wanted to practice…

…

As Tarrant strolled home from Marmoreal, he peered up through the trees to see what it was the stars had to say this evening. He stopped, looking through branches and leaves, and frowned. The stars did not seem to be engaged in their nightly story telling. Instead, they seemed to be making faces. Meaningless faces unattached to a broader story, unless those faces were meant for him. It could be that the stars were teasing him. One constellation smiled, another was in the middle of a wide-mouthed cackle, and the largest was winking. He shook his head, and began to walk once more. He could not fathom why the stars would think enough of him to make their nightly play about the mockery of Tarrant Hightopp, a simple Hatter.

Nevertheless, it was nice that someone or something could take some joy in the day's proceedings, for he could not. He had attempted to focus on his hatting to distract himself, but Time had done funny things and the hours had slipped from him, as he Daydreamed. All he could feel was shame about his inability to Forget what had happened That Night under the stars and shame that he could not simply be a Friend to Alice, because these were the things that Alice wanted from him. He was unable to prevent himself from thinking about the dewy grass beneath them, the night sky above, her breath against his cheek while he was…

"Eneuch!" he grumbled aloud, as he reached the door of the Hat House.[4]

Entering his home, he pulled the door behind him with unnecessary force, knocking a spool of trim off and shelf and sending it tumbling to the ground. He frowned at it: he would pick it up tomorrow. Now the only thing he wanted to do was remove his too tight shoes and too stiff coat and too heavy hat. He flopped down in his favorite chair and hunched over to unlace his shoes. Half way through the unlacing, however, he grew distracted and sat upright to remove his hat. Placing it on the table beside him, he began to work at his bowtie. He sighed as it loosened about his neck, allowing him to breathe freely.

He murmured, "One, two, buckle my shoe," as he returned to his original incomplete task, leaning back down.[5]

With his shoes untied, he toed them off and stretched his legs out before him. He was collecting his wits together with a mental butterfly net as he relaxed back into the chair, when a creaking at the window made his spine go stiff. Breaking and entering had been punished by beheading just the same as every other crime had been during the reign of the Red Queen. It had resulted in a low crime rate, while the execution rate continued to exponentially climb. Tarrant wondered momentarily, as the window rose slowly, if an unintended outcome of the White Queen's resumption of the throne would be a rise in petty crime. It would be awfully petty to take what very little the Hatter had. He giggled nervously and reached down to search for the dagger tucked in his hose.

Pale fingers pushed the window open all the way and a head followed by an arm and foot and whole body climbed through.

"Alice, you've come through the window."

Alice straightened up, brushing out her skirts. "I grew tired of coming through the door."

Tarrant blinked. Was Alice really standing before him, having climbed through his window? After his abrupt departure during their game, he would not have imagined that Alice would come back so soon. Unless she had come to sternly lecture him on Rudeness. Alice sometimes had a great deal to say about Rudeness.

"What are the stars doing tonight?" she asked, taking a step towards him.

Not a lecture, then. He pulled his stocking feet back in towards the chair, regaining the distance he had lost to her advance with a small expenditure in effort.

"It's not a story tonight. They're laughing," he lisped.

"The clouds are laughing Above as well," Alice said, coming yet another step closer.

Unless he began to scoot the chair back, he could not get any further away from her.

"Laughing at us, I think, Hatter," she said, stopping directly in front of him.

"Perhaps the merriment of the heavens was prescribed by a doctor: laughter is the best medicine," he offered by way of explanation with a grin he did not feel.

Her presence was making him nervous, for he did not trust himself at night here alone in his current State of Mind. He had figured out who He was today: he was a Hatter hopelessly in Love with an Alice. She was so close and the moonlight reflecting off her features reminded him of Dream Alice, who did not mind when he showed her again how much he Loved her. The similarity was confusing, therefore he stuffed his hands in the sides of the chair, trapping them between the cushion and the arms so they might not reach up to grab her and pull her into his lap, where he might pet and kiss her.

"It's all this pretending that is making us ridiculous. Wouldn't you agree?" she asked softly.

Yes! This was the worst kind of pretending, he wanted to shout! But, he lost his nerve as he watched Alice extend a hand towards him. If Alice was going to touch him, he could not afford to also be entirely Honest about their Secret: the effort of keeping control of himself would be too much paired with the soul bearing honesty. "A great many things make me ridiculous," he answered instead.

"What we did cannot be undone and there is no use pretending otherwise. No one found out. No one need know."

Her hand found his cheek. He could not help himself: he leaned into her touch. Alice was perplexing him. Her words seemed befuddled, but she was here in the moonlight and speaking to him softly of That Night. She was wearing that look that he sometimes thought to be not quite Innocent.

"I won't say a word," he promised her again, for he imagined she had crawled through his window for reassurance of that fact.

"What do we gain from restraint?" she asked, the corners of her mouth turning up just slightly in an approximation of a muchy smile he had once seen her wear.

Restraint? He had very little Restraint, so he could not rightly answer as to all its benefits. He only knew that Restraint was the only thing that kept Alice coming to visit him. Yet, he was losing his hold on his Restraint: his right hand had snaked out from the cushion of the chair and wrapped itself around her wrist, holding her in place before him.

"I've been thinking, and I would like to be better at it," she said, drawing her thumb across his cheek.

"It?" he parroted back with a small giggle. Alice always liked to better herself, but what was Alice seeking excellence in now?

Her hand slipped from his cheek and he missed it immediately. Would it be unmanly to chase after it and rub his cheek against her palm? Those soft hands touching him, stroking…

"Tarrant," she said, her voice becoming low. "Did you mean what you said about it not always hurting?"

He blinked twice, slowly, before he lunged forward and dragged her into his lap without any finesse, so that she tumbled against his chest with an exclamation of surprise. He was just as surprised: Alice wanted to be better at This with Him. This was the chance he did not think he would ever be granted. He could fix all that went wrong the first time.

"Aye. It will be better th' neist time," he assured her, slipping his arm around her waist and pulling her fully to him. "Alice," he whispered, finding sanctuary in her body's pressure against his.

Alice's hand gripped his hip. "Show me now, please."

"Gledly."

* * *

[1] Alice thinks this to herself when she has fallen down the rabbit hole in _Adventures in Wonderland_.

[2] Tig is a children's game that can be dated to 1738. The name perhaps owes its name to the Scots 'tig,' meaning to touch or tap. The modern schoolyard game of tag has the same rules and numerous variations.

[3] The modern day Jakarta, located on the NW coast of Java and the colonial capital of the Dutch East Indies.

[4] _eneuch_ – enough (Sc)

[5] The rhyme is one of many counting-out rhymes. It was first recorded in _Songs for the Nursery_ , published in London in 1805.


	6. Merry Month of May Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Chapter Four

There were rules, several of them. From the beginning he had promised to keep this a Secret. The rules had multiplied like socks in a drawer from there. Tarrant was not to tell anyone. No one Above must know. No one Below must know either. He was not to touch her when they were at Marmoreal, even if they were alone in his workroom, because someone might hear them or happen upon them. He was not to make her hats, because she had never asked for a hat before and it might look _suspicious_ now. He had to promise not to speak over much about her when she was not there. He had to promise not to stare over much when she _was_ there.

As the rules multiplied, it became harder to live in the moment. The Madness began to whisper to him, make him doubt himself. She was ashamed of him. And why not? He did not deserve an Alice, let alone the Alice, Champion of Underland. She was ashamed, and she only allowed his advances, because Alice was a Curious Creature. She wanted to learn about Everything: why the stars moved about the sky, why food must be served before it could be cut, how queens could run faster than mere humans, and what it was like between a man and a woman. She could not indulge her curiosity Above without censure and he was the only man Below she could trust to keep quiet. Hatter was the default setting for her sexual curiosity.

He could not help himself. Any time she came to him he indulged her, her desires; he indulged himself, his baser wants. He gave her every pleasure and taught her all he knew. He took her in his arms and worshiped her flesh. They spent lazy evenings entwined in a tangle of limbs and sheets. Some nights he went to bed alone and pleasantly awoke to find her crawling into bed with him. There were occasions when they had gone to bed together, worn themselves out, and woken up after several hours only to tire themselves out in passionate embraces once again. Alice had made him feel as if he was a youthie back in Witzend.

They made love, but ultimately, she always went away again, and he began to feel increasingly certain that Alice did not truly want him. Not the way he Wanted her. Tarrant's self-doubt faded as he felt Anger take hold of him.

Who had given her the right to decide when and how they would announce to their friends that they were lovers? She might worry for her virtue Above, but no one cared about such things here. _They were lovers!_ They should be equals! Yet, she instructed him that if someone found out she would not come back. Who had made Alice the Queen of Underland? After all, she had refused to take up her title again, despite having been crowned after crossing the eighth square as a blonde, girl child. [1] He had been willing to make her his Summer Queen, but this was a different kind of reign.

She continued to leave him for Above while he waited patiently Below. She enjoyed having dominion over him and being able to waltz back home without anyone being the wiser. She was making a fool of him, his Pride hissed. He was nothing but a toy to her.

He crushed the teal blue chapeaux in his hands.

"That was a delightful hat," someone observed.

Hatter blinked quickly. It did not sound like an Alice voice, but Alice was the only one nearby. As far as he knew, she was asleep in his bed, where he had left her two hours ago to work out his insecurities and anger on the unfinished hats in his workroom.

"I'm rather fond of that color," the voice continued.

He looked over his shoulder, orienting on the voice: Chessur floated at eye-level propping his whiskered chin on his folded paws.

Hatter looked back at the crushed piece and attempted to reshape it. "The felt is crushed," he said apologetically.

"Admittedly, it isn't _your_ hat, but I would have very much liked a hat like that."

"A Cat in a Hat," Hatter stalled.

This was his Nightmare come to Life: Chessur, who might materialize anywhere he chose, appearing with Alice lying abed behind the door. His house, his bed, his Alice. The Cat would never let him hear the end of it. The whole of Underland would know within a day and the Secret would be ruined. Alice would make good on her Threats; she would never come back.

"I suppose the Real question is why you saw fit to smash it, hmm?" Chessur purred.

"Momentary madness," Tarrant giggled hysterically. He immediately regretted the intemperate outburst. If Alice would wake and wander into the room… "Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asked nervously. How could he get the Cat to leave?

"I never sleep at night. What a Ridiculous thought," he responded haughtily. "Besides, it is much more interesting to pop in and see why it is _you_ are awake…and smashing hats with your fists." The Cat floated over his shoulder and rolled until he was facing Hatter. "What made you mad this time, Hatter? Shouldn't all be well by now? The Red Queen gone, the White Queen reigns, and the Alice is always by your side."

"Not always," Hatter lisped.

"Is _that_ the problem? Greedy Hatter, you want the Alice Always?" the Cat asked with a lazy smile.

Yes, there was no question that was what he wanted most. "Who would not?"

"Precisely: who? Me. I. _I_ would not want the Alice always. Humans are very difficult companions. I haven't chosen a human in many years. My last human was _notoriously_ intemperate," he drawled. [2] "And if I _were_ to choose a human, it would not be one as bossy and uninformed as the Alice."

Hatter said nothing and the Cat lazily wiped at his whiskers, observing him closely.

"But, then, it is the way of humans to pair off like Turtle Doves, is it not?" Chessur finished with a sigh.[3]

That is why it hurt so very much. He was separated from Alice: separated by their worlds, by their Secret, and by her rules, when all he wanted was to be with her Always. But was he willing to do anything towards achieving that end, Tarrant wondered?

Did Chessur know how it hurt? Of course not: a Cat could not possibly know. Was there anyone that could possibly grasp how much it hurt?

"And _you_ have chosen Alice, although we have all been very good not to Speak of it."

Tarrant shook his head slowly, trying to will his tongue to deny Chessur's assessment, but he could not make it say the traitorous words. His Alice, his dearest Alice: yes, he wanted her for his own. "As I lament for thee, my dear," he murmured. "As I lament for thee."[4]

Chessur narrowed his eyes, "I won't stick around for poetry, Hatter. Your love-sick moroseness is moronic. Tell me when the Alice is back and you are the right proper post-Frabjous Day Hatter once more." And with that, he disappeared.

Tarrant rested his head in his hands. The Cat had gone and was none the wiser for Alice's presence in his house, in his bed. He had escaped his fate.

A door squeaked and Tarrant turned on his stool.

"Tarrant?" Alice asked, peeking around the door.

She was wearing his nightshirt. He took a deep breath, as he knew his eyes were beginning to turn blue. The lass did not know how much he liked it when she donned his clothing.

"Yes, love?"

"Is it not a little late for haberdashery?" she asked with a small smile, coming across the creaking floorboards to stand before him.

"Is it late?" he asked, moving to pull out his pocket watch only to find that he was merely attired in his trousers and a crookedly buttoned shirt—the items he had thrown on in the dark after abandoning Alice in his bed—sans waistcoat or pocket watch.

Her eyes skimmed over him. He could not fathom what she was inspecting him for.

"I thought…" she said, trailing off and wiggling her exposed toes.

He stood from his stool. "It _is_ late," he affirmed.

It had become clear to him, as he gazed into her open face—left unguarded by sleep—that Alice had thought he would be there when she awoke. She had not expected Him to leave Her. The irony was not lost on him, and he might giggle about it at another time, but _Mother of Underland_ , he did not like to disappoint her. His anger and insecurities temporarily melted away in the face of her Expectations.

He leaned down and brushed the tip of her ear with his lips, running his hands over her shoulders and gripping her arms. Her contentment was voiced on a toneless puff of air.

"Are ye sleeperie, Alice?" he asked, his voice sounding thick.[5]

Alice's hand slid to his chest. "Not particularly."

"Ah can think o' some weys tae spend the oors," he said, wrapping his hand around hers and moving it over his heart. His mind was painting a picture of Alice in his nightshirt, straddling his hips. His libidinous side was quite the artist.

"I think I'd like to investigate those options in bed," she said, wetting her bottom lip, "because my feet are getting cold."

"Than Ah think A'll join ye in bed," he said, nudging her backwards toward the bedchamber.

Alice had many rules. He followed all of them religiously; otherwise, Alice might never come back.

Tarrant only had one: do not spend yourself inside Alice. And that was proving to be more difficult than he would have liked to admit.

…

"What have you been doing this morning?"Alice asked, as she ran her fingers over the bolt of white silk fabric that was spread before her on the worktable.

"Hatting for Marmoreal."

"Still at it," she said, examining the weight of the fabric.

"A hatter's job is never done," he said, selecting from a pile of white feathers.

"How have they turned out?" she asked, looking about the room at the piles of hats stacked everywhere.

"All white," he replied, sounding a little disappointed.

"You are in need of a little color in your life," Alice agreed.

He tucked the selected feather into the band of the hat. "Yes, I was, until you came along."

Tarrant's little compliments always made her feel as if she was precious. She had not felt that way since she was a small child.

"I was wandering the markets of Batavia this afternoon, you know, and I bought something."

"What did you buy?" Tarrant asked, speaking around a pin in his mouth.

Alice smiled broadly, "A hat."

The tape measure he had in his hand slipped and fluttered to the table. His eyes betrayed a twinkle. "What kind of hat?"

"A fez."

Hatter shook his head. "I wish you would let me hat you, Alice," he said, removing the pin from his mouth. "A fez would not be my first choice."

"It would not have been my first choice for a souvenir, but I could think of nothing but hats when I was in the marketplace," she said, reaching across the table and taking his strawberry shaped pincushion.

"Hats have a terrible habit of niggling the brain," he agreed with a shrug. "I could think of nothing else either and woke up ever so early to get to work, for they would not be silenced."

Alice pouted, "I don't think you sleep enough."

Hatter returned her concern with a rather Naughty grin, and she shook her head, refusing to rise to the bait.

"Besides, it's not your average fez. They call it a Peci, and many of the men wear them," she continued. She liked telling Tarrant about her travels Above: he was an excellent listener and matched her in Curiosity.

"Where will you wear your fez?" he asked, demonstrating that Alice's appraisal of his curiosity was not inaccurate.

"They wear it at marriages and festive occasions, I believe," she said, turning the pincushion round.

"How is the felting?"

"Quite satisfactory, I think. It is black and embroidered."[6]

"Black will look striking against your hair," he agreed, although he seemed reluctant to do so.

"You don't approve of my choice?" she asked, handing him back his pincushion.

"I like you in blue," he said with a soft giggle. "I would hat you in blue. That is, of course, if you would let me."

Alice bit her lip, watching him hide his face from her with his industrious hat making. "One day, dear Hatter, you will hat me far better than anyone else could."

He peered over the hat in his hands, his eyes a deep emerald green. "Are we having a fairytale moment, Alice?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, are we?"

"If this 'one day' of which you speak is a Once upon a Time, then we most certainly are," he mused.

"Once upon a Time, perhaps we'll dine some evening fine on sugared plums and sherry wine …" she hesitated for a moment in her spontaneous rhyme, closing her eyes to aid in its composition. "We'll mark the hour upon the chime, when the mouse has fully climbed. And only then will you and I wear matching hats for all of Time."

She opened her eyes and turned on her stool to garner the praise she thought was forthcoming from Tarrant, but he was no longer evident in the room. "Tarrant?" she called out. Had he dashed from the room on some emergency haberdashery errand? "Tarrant?" she called a little louder.

She stood and hurried around the worktable, where she nearly stumbled over his prostrate form. "Tarrant!" she exclaimed, kneeling beside him.

"I'm in a swoon," he informed her, peeking out of one eye.

"Why?"

"For the love of…rhyme," he explained, shutting his eye and letting his head roll to the side.

"What will rouse you?" she asked, nudging his shoulder. The nudge seemingly had no effect. "Tea?" she prodded.

"Do you have any brewed?" he asked hopefully, despite his feigned unconsciousness.

"No, I have only just arrived. I cannot have brewed up anything."

"But trouble," he reminded her with still closed eyes.

"Double, double _toil and trouble_ ," Alice whispered, as she attempted to tickle him out of the swoon. The tickling produced several jerked movements from him, but Hatter kept his eyes shut tight and returned to his repose as soon as her tickling stopped. "Are you still swooning?" she asked.

He gave no response, which was in fact his response. The swoon was a lasting affliction that required a proper cure. Kneeling beside him, she worked her brain through hoops, trying to think imaginatively. A possible solution other than tea finally occurred to her. She smiled broadly.

"Prepare yourself, Hatter," she gave warning, before taking his chin in hand, tilting it properly, and leaning down to press a solid kiss to his lips.

His swoon immediately ceased, she observed with satisfaction, when his arm slipped around the back of her head, locking her to him. She sighed into his embrace. The insistent tug of his lips on her lower lip made her consider what it would be like to see him in the daylight moving above her, to see him pinned beneath her with her hands splayed on his bare chest, to see them joined together. These were wanton thoughts, she reflected, shuddering against him, as she felt his other arm moving along her backside. She scrambled to free herself before this cure turned into a great deal of impropriety during daytime hours on the workroom floor.

"Was it truly that inspired?" Alice asked, trying to catch her breath, having successfully broken free of him.

"You know I love to smuirich wi' ye," he said, slipping slightly into his brogue.[7]

"Not the kiss, silly Hatter. The rhyme," she explained, sitting back on her heels and tucking her hair behind her ears.

"Oh, heavens above!" he exclaimed, reaching for his knocked off hat and sitting upright. "Inspired? Not only: it was intelligent, intriguing, illuminating, illustrious…"

"Tarrant," she said, cutting him off and offering him a hand as he scrambled to his feet. "I think you are rather too free with the compliments when it comes to rhyming. It was a mediocre effort at best, you must own."

He giggled, but the giggle died on his lips and his face grew very serious, his eyes losing some of their luster. "You did not mean it, did you Alice?"

Her brows knit together, "Mean what?"

"For all of Time?"

His face looked so hopeful, but Alice could not work out what he meant. She reached up and smoothed out one of his eyebrows that had gone awry during his swoon or their embrace. "I'd like to stay for tea today. Is that Time enough?"

His bowtie bobbed as he swallowed, but he said nothing in return. She had a sinking feeling that it was never Time enough, but she had to go back Above. There was business to be done, Mr. Howard to be dealt with, and any number of bothersome details of Reality to be faced. Not just now, however.

"I'd like to host tea here if you don't mind."

He nodded faintly in agreement.

She would play hostess for Hatter. She could demonstrate for him that she inadvertently had learned a thing or two about how to be a proper hostess when her mother was trying to teach her such things.

"Can we invite Thackery and Mally?" she asked, stroking his lapel.

"Whatever you wish, Alice."

* * *

[1] Alice crossed the eighth square in _Through the Looking Glass_ and immediately became queen.

[2] Alice first encounters the Cheshire Cat in _Adventures in Wonderland_ in the Duchess' kitchen. He perhaps was the Duchess' cat.

[3] Due to Biblical references, the mournful sound of its cry, and its strong pair bonds, Turtle Doves have become emblems of devoted love.

[4] "The Turtle Dove" or "The True Lover's Farewell" is an English folksong. It appeared in _Roxburghe Ballads_ in 1710. The stanza that contains the reference to the turtle dove follows:

"O don't you see that milk-white dove

A-sitting on yonder tree,

Lamenting for her own true love,

As I lament for thee, my dear,

As I lament for thee."

[5] _sleeperie_ – sleepy

[6] In Indonesia, the fez is an aspect of the local culture. In Indonesian it is called a 'Peci.' It is black and an ellipse shape. It can sometimes be decorated with embroidery. It came to the region with Islam in the 13th century.

[7] _smuirich_ – to kiss, to cuddle (Sc)


	7. Merry Month of May Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: K+

Rating: K+

Chapter Five

Hatter leaned upon his croquet mallet, feeling as if the ground of Underland itself was rolling beneath his feet.

"My turn!" Dee shouted.

"Nohow! My go, it is." Dum responded, swinging his mallet at his brother.

Hatter grabbed the mallet before it made contact with Dee's large head. "Careful," he advised them cheerfully, more cheerfully than he felt, "you'll put an eye out."

"I _warned_ you that croquet was a violent sport," Nivens said, clasping his paws together. "There's bound to be blood."

"We're not playing with birds," Hatter reminded him. "Or hedgehogs."

"It's a perfectly pleasant sport," the Queen said, gliding forward and tapping the ball with her mallet. "I assure you that everyone will keep their eyes," she said arching her brows, as she watched the ball roll forward.

"My apologies, Your Majesty," the White Rabbit said, wiping his sweaty paws on his waistcoat. "You're always quite right on these matters, quite right, indeed."

"Must you continue to simper like that?" Chessur asked, with a roll of his large teal eyes. "No one is calling for your head."

Hatter was about to step forward to claim his turn, when he stopped, having been almost thrown off his feet. "Oh!" he exclaimed, as he felt the earth swell and fall. Several eyes turned towards him, and he asked a little sheepishly, "Did no one else feel that?"

"Feel what?" Mally asked, as she scrambled atop a wicket, balancing on the thin wire.

How could the Dormouse keep steady under such uneven conditions? "The ground. It's rocking fretfully," Hatter explained.

It was his turn, but he waved the Tweedles on to take it, eager as they were and sick as he was beginning to feel. He pulled a pink silk handkerchief from his pocket and brought it to his lips.

"Hatta?" the Queen inquired, taking note of his strange words and evident distress.

"Gallymoggers," Mally assured the Queen. "Take no notice."

"He only wants for attention. There is a reason he dresses so ridiculously," Chessur purred knowingly.

"Mally is right, Your Majesty," Hatter assured the Queen from behind his handkerchief, throwing the Cat only the briefest of glares. "There is no reason to feel any concern on my behalf." He giggled half-heartedly to prove his point.

The Tweedles appeared to have taken advantage of the minor distraction, which had Mally shouting claims of deceit, dishonesty, deception, and general deviousness. The Queen reluctantly turned her attention from her Royal Hatter to address the issue. The Hatter was very glad of it, for he was feeling as if he might turn as green as the grass upon which they were playing and that would not suit, for his eyes would clash most dreadfully!

His stomach rolled right along with the ground, and he grumbled aloud:

"It is pleasant and dreamy, no doubt, to float  
With "thoughts as boundless, and souls as free":  
But, suppose you are very unwell in the boat,  
How do you like the Sea?"[1]

"Did you say something, Hatta?" the Queen inquired, as she was lifting the aggravated Mally off the wicket in question.

"He's making rhymes," Chessur informed her, floating towards the Hatter, who was now turning away from the group. "More ridiculous attention getting schemes."

Hatter dropped his mallet at another rock of the ground and wrapped his arm around his waist in a vain attempt to keep everything _within_.

"Let us away to the kitchen. I will brew you up something to help with your stomach," the Queen suggested, guessing at his symptoms if not the cause.

"Oh," he groaned, reaching out the hand grasping his handkerchief to try and steady himself. His stomach mimicked the motion beneath his feet most unpleasantly.

"He's…he's…" Chessur began to announce, since he was closest to Hatter and afforded an unpleasant view of what the Hatter was doing, but the Cat was stopped by his own urge to gag, as his body hunched and hacked in the manner of cats.

"Graces of Underland!" the Queen exclaimed, hurrying forward, even as Hatter attempted to wave them all away.

"Alice!" Nivens, the one creature who had not turned their attention on the retching Hatter, called out.

Hatter felt the Queen's hand on his shoulder, as he straightened up and wiped at his mouth with his handkerchief.

"I'm fine," he whispered to both the Queen and her diminutive, concerned passenger. It was not entirely an Untruth, for the ground suddenly had seemed to still.

He lifted his eyes to see Alice approaching across the green, looking a little wobbly legged—perhaps she had felt the ground moving as well? She raised a hand to wave hello and was swarmed by the Tweedles, who pulled at her skirts.

"Hello, Alice."

"Good day, Alice."

"Hello, boys," she replied, bending down to them.

"My, you look pale."

"White as the Hatter, you are."

Her hand went to her forehead, as she straightened. "I'm a little seasick," she admitted. "That's why I stepped through the looking glass: to escape the rocking and rolling of the ship. The waves were dreadfully high."

Hatter did not like to hear that Alice was not feeling well. He did not like that there was a green between the two of them. He did not like that there was a crowd of onlookers. If there had not been a green and a crowd, he would have been at her side by now, pressing his palms to her cheeks, kissing her forehead, and whispering to her until he was quite certain that she felt better. With the crowd present, however, Alice would not be pleased to have him act thus.

The Queen looked from Alice to the Hatter, observing him with a curious appraisal, her eyes narrowing as her mouth turned up ever so slightly at the corners. "Welcome, Champion," she finally said, handing Mally to him and gliding towards Alice. "Seasick, you said?" she airily asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Alice said, summoning up a smile.

"Well then, why don't you and I and…my dear Hatter all go to kitchen. I have just the thing for that."

"The game is spoilt and I didn't even get my turn," Mally groused upon his shoulder.

"Keep playing, my friends," the Queen urged them, as she gestured, arm already linked with Alice's, for Hatter to follow them.

Hatter gently set Mally down on the ground and swallowed, wishing he had some tea to cleanse his pallet and buttress his fortitude. The Queen's stare had quite unnerved him: it was as if she was figuring through something behind those dark eyes of hers, and he hoped very much that it was not their Secret. Alice would be excessively cross should that be the case, and somehow he felt he would be to blame if the Secret was indeed unearthed.

…

As the Queen led the way into the kitchen, Tarrant took the opportunity to slip his hand into the small of Alice's back and give her a Questioning Look. _Was she well?_

She nodded her response with an encouraging smile. _I'm fine._

He drew breath. Alice was fine. Alice was not ill. Alice was merely seasick, as he was. He giggled, as the oddness of that statement struck him.

"Come, come," the Queen said, curling her finger to request that they follow her. She dragged over a pot and began to rummage through the messy kitchen. "I have the ingredients here somewhere. Just not as handy as I would like." She looked over her shoulder at the pair of them. "We so rarely take to the sea," she explained. "There is little call for seasick remedies."

"I am usually not so susceptible," Alice said, leaning against the kitchen's table. "It was a terrible storm."

"Are you safe?" Tarrant asked, itching to take her in his arms. _She could not go back. She must stay here. She was not safe. He could no longer bear the thought of losing her._

"Here?" she asked with a playful smile. "Perfectly."

"I wish you did not travel the seas of Above," Tarrant muttered, but Alice merely frowned at him.

"Our Hatter is usually not given to seasickness on land either," the Queen observed, as she brought over the jars she had selected from the shelves. "And yet, he seems to have developed an acute case."

"You are seasick?" Alice asked turning on the Hatter, as Mirana dropped the first gruesome ingredient—the toenails of a tove—into the brew.[2]

"Well the ground was rocking and swaying, and I got a bit sick. Not terribly manly, I suppose," he apologized.

"The ground was rocking?" Alice asked. "Like an earthquake?"

"It could not have been an earthquake, for the Hatter was the only one to feel it," the Queen said with arched brows. She wiggled her fingers, searching for something on the table. "Is that not so, Hatta?" she pressed, as she found the shabby borogrove feather to add to the mix.[3]

"No one else seemed to feel it," Hatter confessed.

"Indeed, it seems to have only been a two-person phenomena," Mirana said with evident curiosity. "One Above and one Below," she said, stirring and peering into the pot.

"You can't really call something a phenomenon, when I was the only one truly experiencing _seasickness_. Tarrant must be ill on some other account," Alice insisted.

"Landsickness," Tarrant offered.

Mirana set her stirring spoon to the side. "Not proper seasickness, you're right, Alice, my dear, for there was no sea to be had for miles, but my poor Hatter was green just the same."

Alice's fingers found his for just a moment, and he wished he could assure her that his only concern was for Her Health and his own sickness was nothing more than a Nuisance. Their Secret so often kept him from saying what he wished to say.

"There we go," Mirana exclaimed, as she poured the mixture into two cups. "This shall set the pair of you to rights."

Alice and Tarrant took the proffered cups. Tarrant knew enough to hold his nose as he drank it. Seasick potions did not cure nausea through their sweet smell: they were quite noxious. Alice was not as well informed: she sputtered as she swallowed, but managed to get most of the liquid down. A drop of the stuff had landed on her chin, however, and Tarrant watched it glisten there for a moment before rousing himself to hand her the one clean handkerchief he had left. The potion was nasty stuff: there was no reason he should think of licking it off of her.

"Your chin, Alice," he advised her.

"Oh, thank you," she said, wiping at her chin.

"Does this happen often?" the Queen asked cheerfully.

"Does what happen often?" Alice asked, handing the Hatter back his lightly soiled handkerchief.

"That the both of you experience the same thing in different worlds?" Mirana finished, pressing her fingertips together.

"No," Alice said dismissively.

But Tarrant began to think on some of the strange coincidences that had come to light each time Alice came through the looking glass of late.

"Baths and rain showers and difficulties with business and laughing skies and hats," he mused aloud. There must be others as well that he could not directly recall from the muddle of his mind.

"What was that, Hatta?" the Queen asked, floating a step closer to her Royal Hatter.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking from Alice to Queen.

Alice was giving him a Look that seemed to indicate that she did not want him to confess any such thing, but the Queen was giving him a veiled Look that seemed to indicate she was ordering him to tell her. He did not like to get between Females. He did not like to get between Champions and Regents. He did not like to get between Love and Duty.

"Does this happen often?" Mirana repeated, looking somewhat stern despite her floating fingers and fixed smile.

"Not in the least," he finally lisped.

…

"She can't be right. Can she?" Alice asked, as they approached his palace workroom.

"Who? What?" he asked, his mind nervously skittering through ways to convince Alice to stay here with him for a while, until he could be certain that the storm Above had passed.

"The Queen. Mirana seemed to think that this was not a coincidence—our both being seasick."

Tarrant held the door open for her and she brushed past him.

"You didn't want me to answer her," he responded, as the door shut behind them.

"I'd like you to answer now."

Fickle female. He sighed, "We often do the same things." Did she want them alphabetized, categorized, or randomized?

"Maybe that is so, but why would Mirana care about such things?" she asked a little irritably.

"The Queen worries about all of her subjects, and you are her Champion," he explained, spreading his hands before him.

"I didn't like what she was insinuating," Alice admitted, biting her lower lip.

"I don't care about that for now, Alice," he said, slipping his arms around her. "Let her insinuate."

"Tarrant," she whispered against his chest.

"Lose not a button. Refuse cold mutton. Starve your canaries. Believe in fairies. I know, Alice, I know: not here," he agreed, although his arms tightened of their own accord.[4] If he did not let her go, she could not choose to step back through the glass.

"What's wrong? Your eyes have gone yellow," she observed worriedly, as she glanced up at him.

"The storm. Promise you won't go back through the glass today," he begged, pressing a kiss to her brow.

"It might be several days here before the storm is over Above, dear Hatter," Alice said, pressing a hand against his lapel and humming a little at he continued his trail of kisses over her brow and cheek.

"Then stay several days. Stay several weeks," he suggested a little desperately, as he slid one hand into her hair and held her fast. "I'll make sure it is very pleasant. You'll be very happy."

She frowned slightly. "I cannot stay with you here at the palace."

"I'm not asking it of you. The Queen will give you a room or I can take you back to the Hat House."

He scrambled against her, trying and failing to bring her closer to him, for she was already as close as she could be. If he could, he would take her inside his jacket and button her up, so that he might better keep her safe.

"I'm perfectly fine," she assured him, kissing his chin.

She was infringing on her rule. There was to be no touching in the palace. He almost considered reminding her, but thought better of it.

"You're only fine, because you are here with me," he lisped. "Above is dangerous."

"I must go back eventually."

"Then wait. You know it to be dangerous. You know there to be a storm. Wait, please, Alice," he begged. "I cannot do without you."

"Tarrant, dear, I always come back," she promised him.

"Aye, Ah knaw," he said, leaning his forehead against hers, "bit tae lose ye whan A'v lost aw Ah held dear…"

"You're not losing me," she assured him, petting his wilted bowtie.

Alice was so headstrong. What could he say to convince Alice of the necessity of her remaining with him? Loss did not seem as real and present to her as it did for him. Loss for her existed only in the past with the loss of her father. Loss for him was eternal and ever present, and fresh losses seemed always around the corner. He could imagine a world without Alice, but he did not care to do so. She had wrapped herself in and around his heart, and to tear her out would be the end of him.

"Ah luve ye, Alice, and Ah canna dae wi'oot ye."

His heart stopped. He had only meant to hold tight, but instead, he had said what he had managed not to say for many months. He had told her the Secrets of his Heart.

She reached up and touched her hand to his cheek. "All right, I won't go back. Not today."

His chest was still tight with anxiety. Today was not enough. "Not tomorrow."

She nodded, "I will wait for it to be safe."

And then she kissed him, thoroughly breaking her own rule.

* * *

[1] This verse is from Lewis Carroll's poem, "A Sea Dirge."

[2] The tove is a combination of a badger, a lizard, and a corkscrew. They are very curious looking creatures that make their nests under sundials and eat only cheese, according to Humpty Dumpty's explanation of the Jabberwocky poem.

[3] The borogrove is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, "something like a live mop."

[4] These 'rules' are taken from "Rules and Regulations," a poem by Lewis Carroll.


	8. Merry Month of May Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M for adult concepts

Rating: M for adult concepts

Chapter Six

"Good morning, the Alice," a voice purred, drawing Alice's attention up from her task.

"Oh, good morning, Chessur," she replied cheerfully. "You're up early."

"I'm only looking for a suitable ray to nap in, but I saw you through the window here and I thought I might bestow upon you the gift of my company."

Alice smiled and peered back into the box in her lap.

"Sorting buttons?" he drawled.

"Yes. I asked Hatter what I could help with while he went to Marmoreal and he said button sorting. I didn't think it would be as difficult as it's turning out to be."

Chessur rolled onto his back. "How does he want them sorted this time?"

"This time?" Alice asked, as her fingers trailed through the button box, causing the buttons to clink and clack together.

"He's had Mally sort those buttons twenty times at least," Chessur said, leaning his chin on his paw.

"She might be better at it then. I have no idea how to sort them according to Disposition. What do you suppose he meant by that?" she asked, holding up a shiny gold button with a black enamel anchor.

"I imagine that button would go in the Adventurous pile."

"I don't even have a pile dedicated to Adventurous buttons," Alice said, sliding the button onto the table before her, starting a new pile.

Chessur sighed dramatically, "There is always a pile for the Adventurous ones. You'd think the slayer of the Jabberwocky would know that."

"I don't see how any button can be Adventurous," she said, her brows knitting together.

"You're the seafarer, why am I categorizing them for you? I hate water," he said, his fur bristling.

Alice blinked at the button, as it stared up from the table at her in all its Adventurous Glory. "I believe I've gone about this all wrong," she sighed, looking about at the piles she had already created.

Chessur smirked, "I very much doubt the Hatter could find anything wrong with how you see fit to do anything. You might bury them in the backyard and he would be pleased."

She pulled another handful of buttons from the box and frowned over them, convinced that Tarrant would be disappointed in her efforts.

"Well, they're round and sound and pretty," Alice mused.[1] She could easily categorize them according to shape or color, but sorting by disposition was causing her to use a great deal of imagination.

"Hatter went to deliver hats, I presume?" Chessur asked, floating down until he rested on the tabletop. He nimbly wound around the random piles of buttons she had already created.

"Yes, the orders stack up if he is away too long."

"He spends a great deal of time Away of late," Chessur observed. "I can nearly always find him here."

With You, he might as well have said.

"Is that so?" she replied noncommittally.

"So, he went off on an errand and you volunteered to stay behind and _sort buttons_?" he asked, as he batted a button between his paws. "That's rather cozy of you, Alice."

"I like to make myself useful," Alice replied blandly, as she pulled a pink button in the shape of a 'C' from the box.

"Yes, I suppose you must fill the long hours with some sort of Activity while you're staying with the Hatter, hmm?"

Alice could feel a blush rise on her cheeks.

"It has been over three weeks since you last arrived through the looking glass, after all. I'm sure you've run through almost Everything that the pair of you could do."

Had it been that long?

"You never used to stay so very long, the Alice," Chessur commented.

No, in the past she had never stayed more than a day or two, but he had asked her to stay due to the storm and the days had begun to run together in a pleasant whirl of togetherness.

"You like our Hatter," he announced, a large grin spreading across his face.

Alice scoffed, quickly sorting another three buttons into piles with unknown Disposition Designations. If she cared for Tarrant, the Cheshire Cat would be the last person to whom she would confess it.

"You deny it?"

"I would never deny that I am fond of the Hatter. We are all very fond of the Hatter, are we not?" she asked innocently.

"It's understandable that you wish to be evasive, for it _is_ a stupid human emotion, but…" Chessur paused to wash behind one ear, seemingly not caring that Alice was waiting for him to finish. "I believe in this case, it's best that the feeling is returned. He'd be intolerable if you went away again."

Alice felt a curious warmth spreading through her chest and her pulse quickened. _Calm yourself, Alice Kingsleigh._ I will have to go back, she reminded herself. Just not today.

…

Alice lay beside him, her blonde hair splayed out in the grass. This was the grove that he thought of as Their Place. It was where Alice and Tarrant had begun even if the world was ignorant of the fact that there was an Alice and Tarrant. He held this grove in the deepest affection.

He worked nimbly to attach two white faced daisies—two of many that lay cheerfully scattered in his lap, having been picked from the field, which was now in bloom with a wealth of insentient flowers. The first bracelet was already finished and adorned her wrist, and these last two flowers would complete the matching bracelet for Alice's other slender wrist. He wanted her to have two, so that she would not list to one side.

"Other wrist, Alice," he directed her.

Alice dutifully raised her wrist, and he leaned across her to tie the two ends of the daisy chain together about her pale wrist.

"I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful, a faery's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild."

He knotted the ends together and sat back up, preparing to make a longer chain for her tresses. She would not let him hat her, but she had said nothing against crowning. He glanced down at her form, as he began to work at the first two daisies. Her upturned face stared with closed eyes up at the bright Underland sun. Her newly braceleted wrist rested on her middle where he had gently placed it.

Her head rolled to face him in the grass, addressing him with her eyes still shut, "You're more a fairy's child than I. Only your logic would see it otherwise."

"My logic is quite illogical," he agreed, working on the green stems.

"Then perhaps it cannot in good conscience be considered logic."

"It is Underlander logic," he explained, raising his brows over his minute task. "Besides, what makes you think I speak of you?" he teased, quickly linking another daisy to the ever lengthening chain.

"Are you in the habit of meeting other ladies in the meads?" Alice asked, trailing a hand down his arm.

Even through his shirt, her touch caused warmth to begin to bloom in his belly. He swallowed, tying off another daisy. He was getting better at this: he would be finished with her daisy chain crown in a few moments.

"Perhaps I _was_ speaking of you," he admitted. "You are more fairy than you think, you know."

"Am I?" Alice asked, propping herself up on a bent arm.

"You come and go from another world. You're strong willed." He held the daisy chain before him, judging whether it was long enough for a coronet. "You have faced down great mythical dangers and inspired prophetic poetry." Nodding to himself, he tied the two ends together. "And you are very beautiful," he finished, as he fit the daisy crown on her head. He smiled broadly. "My Summer Queen."

Alice reached up and twined her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck. "Come down here."

The throaty tone of her request instantly aroused him.

He leaned down, nudging her nose, chin, and cheeks in turn with his nose as he whispered:

"I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan."

This immediately became his goal: to make Alice moan. He kissed her softly, bracing his hands in the grass on either side of her face.

"Do you know what I think of when we're here?" he asked, moving to place a kiss below the shell of her ear.

The soft sound Alice made in response was _almost_ a moan, but he had familiarity with Alice Moans now and this was not quite it.

"Hats?" she asked with mock innocence.

He quirked a brow at her, giving her a look that demanded Complete Seriousness.

"What?" she murmured, as he traced the neckline of her bodice with a thimbled finger, prompting her to develop goose bumps.

He nipped at the curve of her neck. "I think of you and me under the stars…" he began.

"She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,

And there I shut her wild sad eyes-

So kiss'd to sleep."[2]

Alice laughed hoarsely as her back arched under the ghosting caress of his hand over her breasts. "Your choice in verse makes it sound as if I _seduced_ _you_."

"Bewitched, my Faerie Queen," he amended, kissing her nipple through the silky fabric of the dress he had made her.

Alice hummed: that also sounded something like a moan, but not quite. Her hand pulled his head tighter to her breast.

He chuckled as he rested his head against her chest, "Ah think o' ye an' me an' the gift ye gae me that nicht." He pressed his hand to her pelvis over her skirts. "Ah think o' muivin' in ye."

Alice moaned. Victory! He smiled against her bodice, pleased with himself.

"Ah think o' yer pleisur." His mind went blank for a moment when he felt Alice's hand slip from his hair and grasp the band of his trousers. He suspected he knew where Alice's hand was heading. "Did ye feel pleisur, lass?"

Her hand found her target and he groaned.

"Yes, Tarrant," she said, running her hand over him with delectable pressure.

She was no longer sweetly shy and uncertain. Alice had wanted to get better at making love; as a result of their studies, she now knew how to elicit bliss with a skillful touch. He considered her a very good pupil.

"An' Ah think on mine ain pleisur."[3]

"Kiss me," she urged.

He lifted his head from her breast, whispering as he closed the difference between them, "Yes, my Queen."

"Just Plain Alice," she murmured against his lips.

"Aye, and that is more than enough."

…

They lay side by side in the grass regaining their breath.

"I'm rather fond of this grove of ours," Alice said with a shaky laugh.

"I'm rather fonder of what we Do in the grove," Tarrant said, rolling onto his side. "Ah, you have lost your crown," he said, finding her daisy chain limp in the grass beside her head. "That will Never do," he said, replacing it on her tresses.

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do," Alice sing-songed as he fiddled with the daisies until they lay as they should.[4]

"These can't answer you, Alice. These are not speaking daisies. I'm not a barbarian," he lisped, pulling back to admire his handiwork. Satisfied, he began to button his pants back up. "If they were speaking daisies, I would have crowned the queen with carrot tops," he assured her.[5]

"Carrot tops?" Alice asked, shaking down her skirts.

"Well, yes, if daisies were not available. Or if they happened to be speaking, feeling daisies, in which case, they would rightly object to use in crowning. Thackery has been known to make a crown out of potatoes, when there was nothing else on hand."

"Thackery is terribly inventive," Alice agreed. "Who benefited from his potato crown?"

Tarrant looked down at the blades of grass between them and ran his bethimbled finger through their uneven lengths. "The Queen of the Meypowl one year, when daisies were in short supply," he answered a little sadly.[6] There had not been a Meypowl Queen since Horunvendush Day. Alice would have made a very pretty one, dressed all in white and weaving the colorful ribbons, but she was no maid now and without a clan celebration there was no pole to weave.

Her fingers intertwined with his, crushing blades of grass in their combined grasp.

"I'm here with you," she whispered.

Alice understood, but of course she did. He closed his eyes, letting the relief of belonging to an Alice who understood his spirit so well wash over him. He had been waiting for a Champion, but he had not known that the Alice would not only save Underland, but him as well.

"I'll have Thackery make you a crown of new potatoes, since they make for the prettiest spud crown," he said with a smile, "and not so heavy," he added, as he opened his eyes. "He will be tickled pink and green and blue to do it for you."

She squeezed his hand, "I'd like that."

As she was leaning forward, presumably with the intention of kissing him, Tarrant spotted a white form approaching them from the direction of the Hat House.

"We have a visitor," Hatter said, struggling to sit upright and letting go of Alice's hand.

Alice likewise scrambled to her knees, kneeling in the grass. He cast his gaze upon her and worried that their visitor would note the flush on her cheeks and chest, or he might likewise notice that Tarrant's shirt was not tucked into his pants. Every time their Secret was threatened, he felt his heart in his throat, threatening to choke him with the fear of their being exposed and Alice leaving forever.

It was Nivens. The only thing that he could take comfort in was that it was not Chessur, who might be a mite bit sharper than the Queen's messenger.

"Excuse me," Nivens said, as he came within earshot. He rubbed his paws together nervously, "I was sent by the Queen to fetch you, but you were not in the Hat House. I had to wander about rather aimlessly to find you, and I dislike almost nothing as much as aimlessness."

"Except lateness," Hatter supplied.

"Yes, well," the Rabbit paused, looking from Alice to Hatter and back again. "Were you…napping?"

"Open air afternoon naps are good for the digestion," Hatter said authoritatively. "They come highly recommended by Chessur." In truth, Hatter could think of no one with more napping knowledge than the Cheshire Cat.

Nivens blinked his pink eyes. "I've never thought much about feline digestion. That's a rather unpleasant prospect to be honest. They're rather…hard on my kind, you know."

"Well, you should never trust a Cat, I suppose," Hatter hedged.

"And yet you have," Nivens said, with a shiver.

"Excuse me, but to be clear: the Queen sent for us?" Alice asked, getting the conversation back on track, in her usual polite manner.

"Yes, yes, she certainly did. She needs to speak with you immediately. I'm not sure I know how that slipped my mind," he mused with a twitch of his nose.

"I believe I am to blame," Tarrant confessed. He hoped at very least that he had distracted the Rabbit from dwelling upon the state in which he had found them.

"Your departure cannot be delayed," Nivens stated, pulling a pocket watch from his bright blue waistcoat. "There is no time left for digestive napping, I'm afraid. You simply must come with me. I can brook with no refusals."

"Sounds quite serious," Hatter said, standing and offering Alice his hand. He hoped very much that the Queen was not in need of a Champion.

Nivens straightened up in a burst of self-importance, "A summons from the Queen is always of the utmost import."

"Did she happen to mention what it was about?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Now you expect me to inquire after the whys of queenly orders?" Nivens sniffed.

"We're right behind you," Alice said, tucking her hair behind her ears and nodding towards Hatter.

He glanced down at himself. _Yes, Alice, I am aware that my shirt is untucked_ , he thought at her.

She smirked, perhaps hearing his mental whining. She may well have, for Alice truly understood. They were increasingly of the same mind.

* * *

[1] Alice quotes from a nursery rhyme, "Buttons," which appeared in _The Real Mother Goose_ (1916), illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright.

[2] These verses are taken from John Keats' ballad, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," which was published in 1820. The poem describes an encounter between an unnamed knight and an otherworldly woman. After going to her elfin lair, he falls asleep and has a vision of "pale kings and princes," who cried, "La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall!" When he awakes, he finds to find himself on a "cold hill's side." The meaning of this poem is something of an enigma. The knight is evidently doomed to remain on the hillside, but why this is the case is open to debate. It is possible that the Belle Dame has entrapped him, in a manner similar to Tam Lin, the hero of Scottish lore. Moreover, knights in many cases take vows of chastity, which may imply that this knight has been compromised not only by the enchantment but also by his dalliance.

[3] _mine ain_ – my own (Sc)

[4] Alice sings from the chorus of "Daisy Bell," which was composed in 1892 by Harry Dacre, a popular English composer. The chorus is as follows:

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do,

I'm half crazy all for the love of you.

It won't be a stylish marriage -

I can't afford a carriage,

But you'd look sweet upon the seat

Of a bicycle built for two."

[5] This line is adapted from a nursery rhyme taken from Leroy F Jackson's _Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes_ , published just after the turn of the century. The first verse is:

"Crown the king with carrot tops,  
Dress him in sateen,  
Give him lots of licorice drops,  
With suckers in between."

[6] _Meypole_ – Maypole (Sc)


	9. Merry Month of May Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Chapter Seven

"You're here," Mirana said cheerfully with a twirl of her fingers as Alice and Tarrant filed into Marmoreal's library.

"Your Majesty," they said in unison.

"Did I disrupt your afternoon?" she inquired with raised brows and an open face.

 _Almost_ , Alice thought.

"An invitation to court is never a disruption," Tarrant lisped.

That was a White Lie if she ever heard one, Alice thought, biting her lip to keep from laughing. They had been so singular of late, that nearly every visit from a friend or call from Marmoreal seemed somewhat of a disruption of their time together.

The Queen smiled, tilted her head, and blinked her large dark eyes. "An invitation is never required, but then…you know that, of course. Come, come, I have something I would like to speak with you on," she said, beckoning them to approach the large reading table in the middle of the room.

Her white hair fell over her shoulders as she leaned forward, fingering the voluminous tome before her. The pages were intricately illuminated with images that looked quaintly ancient even in Underlandian terms. "I have been contemplating the perplexing case of sea sickness that you both experienced. You remember?" she inquired.

"Yes," Alice answered warily. Inexplicably, she had not appreciated the Queen's interest in that coincidence when it had happened. What did it matter if the Queen took an interest in happenstance? Somehow, however, the happenstance, once pointed out to Alice, seemed to Loom Large. The renewal of the Topic left her just as uneasy.

"Oh, yes," Tarrant agreed. "Alice's Above storm and my rolling ground Below."

Alice would have given him a Look, but he was engaged in peering at the text before them.

"I worried that there might be an enchantment to blame," she said, her hands floating up to her shoulders. "It took me some time to find the answer, because I was looking in the wrong books. A cast spell is not to blame in this case."

"There's nothing to blame," Alice said. "It was only a strange coincidence," she insisted.

Mirana smiled a little indulgently. "These things are very rarely due to coincidence, my dear. Just as it was no coincidence that you found Underland as a little girl and became my Champion upon your return, it is no coincidence that you and my Hatter are experiencing the effects of a muinlicht marrae."

"I don't speak much Outlandish," Alice said, looking up at Tarrant, who had suddenly gone very still. "What does it mean?"

"Oh, it means…moonlight…" he began before trailing off and removing his hat.

"This isn't the result of a spell, it is the magic of Underland itself afoot," Mirana said, pointing towards an illustration of vines intertwining. "Your lives have become like two threads woven together to become one. When you are in Underland, it works to makes the two of you 'of one purpose,' but when Alice goes Above, the magic cannot work towards that aim. The best it can do is make you follow similar paths, experience similar things. A seasick Alice Above, a seasick Hatter Below. It may even be doing funny things with Time, so that not as much Time passes Below when you go Above, Alice," the Queen concluded, steepling her fingers together.

She had thought that Underland had no Need of the Alice any longer, and therefore, it would not attempt to control her Fate or set her path. "Why would Underland do that?" she demanded somewhat irritably.

"It was not a whim, I assure you, my dear. Underland would not have done it if you had not…" Mirana paused, cleared her throat and floated away from the table. She began to busy herself around the room, picking up discarded books and stacking them together.

"What is she getting on about?" Alice whispered to Tarrant.

"I don't know, Alice," he stage whispered back.

"Performing the muinlicht marrae ritual set these things in motion," the Queen absentmindedly spoke, as she reshelved books.

The Queen did not continue with her speech, and Alice began to become quite annoyed. They had been sent for and now Mirana was dancing around the issue.

"Moonlight _what_?" Alice said, turning towards Tarrant.

"Moonlight _when_?" he replied.

"Excuse me?" she asked, losing her temper.

"You're excused," he lisped.

"Moonlight match," Mirana stated, drawing Alice's attention sharply away from Hatter. "It means _moonlight match_."

Alice swallowed. Something about the way the Queen was staring between the two of them without meeting either of their gazes was making her nervous.

"We performed a moonlight match ritual?" Alice questioned, willing her voice not to shake.

"I _believe_ so, based on the symptoms as they have presented themselves. I won't inquire about the details, however."

Alice's hands balled at her side as she realized that a bluish blush was blooming on the Queen's ever-white cheeks. She turned to look at Tarrant, but he had moved to examine the book once more and was deeply engaged in reading its text. "What does it say there?" she said, her voice rising. She moved to stand at Tarrant's shoulder.

"Our Secret," Tarrant lisped. "The manner in which we…in the moonlight…"

"Of course I respect your right to privacy on this matter," Mirana said from across the room, "I certainly won't speak on it. It was not my intention to embarrass you. I thought perhaps you should be aware of it, otherwise I would not have brought it up."

"What does this mean?" Alice demanded. "I have a right to know."

"Yes, of course, my dear," the Queen said. "The magic is strong. The resulting marriage is…"

Alice felt as if her head was going to explode. The Queen knew of their Secret and she and Tarrant were Married without her knowledge? "Marriage? I assure you that we are _not_ married." Tarrant had straightened up and was staring at her with eyes gone yellow. "Put it right out of your mind. The both of you."

She was breathing so quickly that she was afraid that she might faint, like the frail women at home. "How is this undone?" she asked, crossing her arms. She could feel Tarrant's eyes upon her, as he stood facing her unmoving.

The Queen batted her eyes for a moment, before speaking, "That is what I have been trying to explain, my dear Champion: this is a magical marriage. It cannot be undone in the manner of regular marriages."

"Oh, it most certainly can be undone. If there is a way of doing a thing, there must be a way of undoing a thing," she reasoned a little desperately.

"Some things cannot be undone: like death," Mirana offered.

"That is hardly a helpful comparison," Tarrant grumbled, shooting the Queen a Look.

Alice watched the pair of them trade looks back and forth, as if they were discussing something without her being there. She would not be ignored. Her wishes would not be ignored. "Listen, I won't have anyone controlling my path. _I make the path!_ "

"Alice…" Tarrant spoke hoarsely, but she could feel no sympathy for him.

How could he have done this to her?

"Perhaps you might want to be alone," Mirana said, waltzing towards the door.

"No, please don't trouble yourself, Your Majesty. I was just leaving," Alice said, hurrying towards the door and brushing past the startled Queen.

Alice could hear Tarrant following quickly on her heels, but she refused to turn around. The last thing she wanted to do was make a scene in the hallways of Marmoreal and she did not trust herself to be composed at this moment. She simply wanted to make it to the nearest looking glass, which happened to be in Tarrant's workshop, and step right back through to her cabin on the Wonder, where she was certain several hours at least must have passed during her absence.

Tarrant, she realized, at least had the good sense to keep silent as she marched through the hallways towards her intended destination. That is, until they reached his workroom, when she attempted to shut him out. He caught the door, stepped through with yellow eyes aglow and slammed it behind him. She jumped at the sound.

"An' whaur dae ye think ye'r gaein, Alice?" he demanded.

"Back through the looking glass," she announced, moving towards the corner, but he caught her arm.

"Rinnin' awa, are ye?"

"No, I'm choosing to go home," she said, tugging the arm he had in his grasp with little effect.

"Ye'll staund here like a Champion an' we sall hiv this oot first," he said, dragging her towards one of the stools pulled up to his worktable.

"There is nothing to discuss."

"Ye dinna want tae speak on oor bein' guidman an' guidwife?" he asked, pushing her down onto the stool and holding her shoulders so that she might not attempt to move.[1]

"Why would I, when that is clearly not the case? I do not recognize such nonsense as binding," she boldly stated.

His eyes grew orange. "'tis _nonsense_ , ye say? The notion o' ye and me bein' mairit is nonsense?"[2]

"Magic cannot make a marriage," she responded without addressing what she knew to be the Real question at hand.

"Oh, bit it haes," he responded with a stiff nod.

"This is a rather funny kind of marriage, wouldn't you say? Where neither one of us gave consent and I live Above and you here Below?"

"That coud be fixed easy," he growled.

Alice swallowed and drew a deep breath. She was horrified to find herself at this moment overcome by the most inopportune thoughts about her Hatter with him menacing over her.

"Without consent there is no marriage," she finally managed to respond.

"An' thare's naething we dae that wad mak fowk believe ye war ma wumman?" he asked, his brows arched knowingly.

Of course they did. She played at being Tarrant's wife every time she lay in his arms at night. "What we Do, is nobody's business," she exclaimed. "I'm humiliated the Queen knows that we…that we have…"

He sneered, "Ah hiv ayeweys kenned ye war shamed o' me, Alice." He pushed back from her and crossed his arms. "The Queen willna be spoilin' yer secret."

"I didn't say I was ashamed of you: I'm ashamed of myself. Of what I have allowed to happen."

He shook his head, "Ye didna act shamed this efternuin."

Alice flushed red. She had not been, because she had lulled herself into believing that no one would find out their Secret. There was now not a room in the Hat House in which she had not brazenly flaunted her affection for Tarrant. What once seemed a great threat—being discovered in the meadow—had not prevented her from making love to him there today in the broad daylight. Now that she knew the Queen was not only aware of their affair, but knew the intimate details of their first encounter, however, her sense of security was no more.

"I knew what the consequences might be, and I let myself forget them, because…" Because her heart had been urging her to do so; because her body had been complicit in the persuasion.

"Nocht haes cheenged: wifie or nae, ye can come an' gae as ye please as ye ayeways hiv."[3]

He sounded bitter, and for a moment Alice could think of nothing but his tone, before she focused on the important issue at hand. "I don't care where it was that it happened or whether the moon was full or not, it does not a marriage make. I am Not your Wife."

"Ye want for imagination, Alice," he said a little smugly. "'tis Underland, mynd."

"And you lack forthrightness," Alice said, mirroring his posture by also crossing her arms. "How could you trick me in such a manner?" She had not thought her Hatter capable of such deceit.

His face drew up, disbelief distorting his features. "Ye think Ah schamed this? Ah daed nae knaw," he said, his arms falling to his sides.[4]

"And it never occurred to you, when we were…experiencing these coincidences, that perhaps you had _mistakenly married me?_ "

"Alice," he said, stepping towards her and kneeling down. "Ye hiv tae believe me. The beuk the Queen haed war a beuk o' the maist auncient Underlandian glamourie. A'm nae fameeliar wi' it."[5]

Alice felt as if she was going to cry, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She did not know what to believe. He seemed so sincere, and she had always thought him to be honest. Yet, she also knew that he wanted her to stay above most anything: would he have done such a thing to keep her by his side?

She stood, leaving him groveling at her feet. "I can't think right now." Here in Underland, if the Queen's book was to be believed, the magic would be working to make them of one purpose. She could not even trust herself to think this through while she was here Below. "I need to go."

He made a grab for her feet, but she stepped nimbly away.

"Wad it be sae bad bein' ma wifie? Ye hiv been here wi me and we are happy. A'll make ye happy, Alice…"

Standing before the looking glass, she listened woodenly as he continued to beg and plead. Yes, she had been happy. Each time the world Above had become too much for her, she had chosen Tarrant Below. She had spent many happy days here with him. Her choices Above were just as limited as they had been some months ago when she had first come to Tarrant at night. What troubled her now was the feeling that her choices Below had been similarly constrained. Underland and Tarrant had presented themselves to her as an alternative, someplace she might be happy, but she wanted to make up her own mind. Her mother, Lady Ascot, and Underland itself should have no control over her path in life. Perhaps she should have known better: Underland seemingly cared very little for free will.

"…Ah dinna hiv ower much, bit Ah will…"

Finally, she cut his desperate babbling off, "Tarrant, please. I might stay and perhaps I would be happy. But, would that only be because of some Ancient Magic making us fit to be a pair? I have to think about things. I need Time."

Silence reigned in the room, as she reached out a trembling hand, feeling the coolness of the wavering glass caress her fingertips.

The last thing she heard was Tarrant calling her name.

…

Tarrant had sent away everyone who came to check on him after the Queen publicly had expressed some cheerful concern about her Royal Hatter. When Mally had continued to come to the workroom and finger her hatpin while he attempted to drown himself in his craft, he decamped for the Hat House, hoping that distance would discourage visitors. Yes, he knew that he had skipped several meals. Yes, he was aware that is was very early in the morning or very late at night and most people were in bed. Yes, he recognized that his one hand was sporting a rather nasty gash from his shears that could benefit from a bandage at very least. He was cognizant of all of these things and he did not need reminding. He just needed silence and endless hatting materials.

Or Alice.

It had only been a few days, and he knew that Time worked differently Above, so Alice might not be aware of the days passing Below. Yet, he desperately wanted her to have finished with her thinking. He needed to feel her against him, so he could be sure that she would always come back. As things stood, he was no longer sure.

He pulled back his pillow, tucking a piece of yarrow underneath and whispering:

"Good night, fair yarrow,  
Thrice goodnight to thee;  
I hope before tomorrow's dawn ,  
My true love I shall see."[6]

He had watched his eldest sister do this once, and she had sworn by the results. Maybe this would help him as well.

He stood by the bed in the light of the new moon, reconsidering his actions, however. Thinking better of it, he removed the yarrow. "Alice would not like it if magic brought her back to me," he said aloud with a sigh.

"You didn't need magic to bring her back," an Alice voice said from behind him.

He froze, staring down at the yarrow in his hand. His madness was very cruel to imitate his Alice. He felt a hand rest on his back between his shoulder blades and he jerked at the contact.

"Tarrant, dear, please turn around," the voice pleaded softly.

He slowly turned, preparing himself for whatever vision might greet him. But it was not a vision. It was the Alice: he would know her anywhere.

"Forgive me?" she asked softly.

He did not hesitate. "Anything." Seeing her standing before him, he did not forget all his hurt, but all he could focus on was her being here with Him. "Alice…" he lisped.

She reached up a hand and pressed it to his cheek. "I'm not ashamed of you, Tarrant. I'm miserable that I made you think that I ever could be."

"Not ashamed," he repeated back to her, wanting to hear the words again, but afraid to ask her to say them for him. He would not want Alice to think that he did not believe her. It was not Her he mistrusted, it was Himself he had trouble believing in.

"Not at all," she assured him, stroking his cheek with her thumb. "I'm proud of you," she said, rising up on the balls of her feet.

He wanted her kiss; nevertheless, he dropped the yarrow and gripped her by the shoulders, pressing her heels flat to the ground. Choosing this option took almost inhumane strength, and he was no Champion, but they needed to talk. All toy and no talk had gotten them in this muddle to begin with, or perhaps Underland itself was to blame for his current state of distress.

"I would tell the world about us if I could," she pleaded.

Of course, he knew that she _could_ tell the world or at very least _this_ world if she wanted. She wanted him to understand that it was not a matter of want, however; it was a matter of what she felt herself ready to do. They were still very much on Alice Time, and Alice was not ready to Choose.

"What is it you want, Alice?" he murmured, still gripping her shoulders. He suspected that Alice not only wanted to have the tea cake, but to eat it as well.[7] The shame of it was that he knew he was the cake, and he was not sure he had the nerve to tell her that he wanted a great deal more than she did. _He wanted her to be his wife_. If she did not believe that the moonlight and their passion that night had made it so, he wanted to correct that immediately. That she would want their match undone was so excruciating that it brought him real physical pain.

"I want you. Just you, Tarrant."

He frowned.

"You don't believe me?" she asked, glancing at her shoulder, where he held her resolutely a foot away from him. He hoped very much that he was not going to break Alice, because it occurred to him that he was holding her very tightly.

"Tarrant!" she exclaimed. She clasped his hand and removed it from her shoulder, cradling his hand palm up in hers.

His nasty gash was exposed to her view. He attempted to curl his fingers closed, but Alice forced them back open.

"Why haven't you bandaged this?" she asked, shaking her head. "You're not taking care of yourself."

"I was…very busy." His excuse did not seem good enough in the face of Alice's disappointment.

His gaze flickered to her shoulder, and he realized that he had bled on her dress. Even if it was a drab grey dress, he regretted ruining it. "I'm sorry about your dress," he lisped quietly.

"You shall make me another," she replied, stroking his fingers.

His chest tightened. Alice wanted him to make something for her, which meant she intended on staying or at very least coming back once more. But as what? What was he to Alice? "You left very certain of what we are not, Alice. I'm not sure we are in complete agreement about what we are and what we can be."

She nodded slightly. "I understand. Our worlds are different and we do not agree on the nature of this magic. But, I believe there is something considerably more important that we Do agree on, my Hatter," she assured him, lifting his palm to her lips and pressing a gentle kiss just below the gash.

He swallowed, his hand trembling in her grip. "What is that?"

"Loving," she whispered.

He stared at her, willing her to explain herself more fully, for he could think of no rhymes or riddles to ease the apprehension of the moment.

"I love you, and no one can convince me that I owe that emotion to anything other than you being You. That is more than enough for me to have fallen in love with you."

Alice kept saying _love_ , and he had never imagined her saying anything sweeter.

"If I don't believe that magic can make a marriage, then there is no reason to suspect that magic is responsible for the feelings I have for you," she finished.

Alice loved. Alice loved Him! Would not everything have been better if he had confessed and she had confessed this much earlier? He pulled his injured hand from her grip, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his forehead to hers.

"Alice, I've loved you…since..." he trailed off, concerned that the strength or duration of his emotions might frighten her away. Alice could be as skittish as a rabbit in a waistcoat.

She rubbed her nose against his. "I've loved you since before I knew what it meant to love," she said with a soft smile. "We don't have to be married for that, do we?" she asked.

To him, she would always be infinite, everything, the world, and not just his lover, not just his wife. There were no words.

"You must understand that I was not free to Choose Above. My mother arranged my marriage and I only just escaped it."

Yes, Alice had told him this. While she clearly _had escaped_ being caught by another man, the thought was enough to make the Badness begin to whisper nasty things in his ear and he had to shake his head to try to clear it.

"Is is crowded?" Alice inquired.

He nodded, 'yes.'

"It isn't that I don't want you, Tarrant. It is just that I want to be my own woman."

She paused, and he knew that she was waiting for him to say something.

"I want you to be fully Alice, nothing less." Was that what she needed to hear? How could he ask her to be anything but herself? "We can make our own path," he promised.

Once voiced, she did not correct the 'we' and that was something in and of itself, he supposed. It was better than being a 'he,' alone in the world. Alice was not offering to share their Secret. Knowledge of that would only extend to his Queen. Alice was not offering to be his wife. She could not imagine a husband who would let her be her own woman, which was something of a regrettable failure in imagination. However, she was giving him her heart, and he would agree to almost anything, knowing that Alice was not merely physically curious or a Champion of kindness, but truly wanted and loved _him_ : Tarrant Hightopp.

* * *

[1] _guidman_ – husband (Sc); _guidwife_ – wife (Sc)

[2] _mairit_ – married (Sc)

[3] _nocht_ – nought (Sc)

[4] _schame_ – to plan (Sc)

[5] _glamourie_ – magic, enchantment, spells (Sc)

[6] According to _Flowers Flower-lore_ (1884), English maids in the West and South of England would pick the herb during a new moon and place it under her pillow, saying this rhyme. The girl would be rewarded with a sweetheart, who would make her a bride.

[7] This well-known idiom dates from at least 1546, where it is recorded as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?" in John Heywood's 'A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue.' The modern version is a corruption that first appeared in 1812.


	10. Merry Month of May Chapter Eight, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Chapter Eight: part 1

Hamish Ascot was not accustomed to being thwarted. Yes, it had happened on occasion, but he was not familiar enough with it that he took kindly to the situation.

This afternoon he felt particularly thwarted. Earlier he had been visited by Lowell Manchester, Miss Alice Kingsleigh's brother-in-law. The man had arrived at the Ascot's offices searching for Hamish's father, but as the man was not in town, he had deigned to speak with Hamish instead. Hamish had received the gentleman somewhat coldly, for they were not particularly friendly acquaintances and he feared the reason for the man's unscheduled visit. Little did Hamish know how right he was to feel that something was amiss: it was just not the sort of issue he had been imagining.

Helen Kingsleigh had passed away quite suddenly of an apoplectic fit in the early morning hours.[1]

Alice Kingsleigh must be summoned home, Manchester had insisted. He had said that her sister would have it no other way; Margaret was inconsolable. Hamish had no trouble believing that to be the case, as the man she should be able to expect to receive consolation from was rather inept at relations with his wife, as far as Hamish could tell. Hamish sneered to himself: the man spent his time _practicing_ his skills elsewhere.

Hamish had stood frozen to the ground as Lowell shared his news and made his impossible demands. It was not as if Alice was simply in the countryside and could be fetched by carriage: Alice was abroad. She was weeks away from London and not immediately reachable by cable. Their only hope was that she contacted them with business news at her next port of call so that he might send her a telegram with the unfortunate news.[2] That could also be any number of days, however, and it made Hamish a little nauseated to think of sending such a missive to her.

 _Alice STOP_

 _Your mother's dead STOP_

 _Come home STOP_   
[3]

Lowell had continued to demand that Alice be sent for, since—he irritably announced—he would not hear the end of it if she was not procured posthaste. Hamish had been forced to explain that there was nothing to be immediately done. Unless they planned on waiting quite some time to put Mrs. Kingsleigh in the ground, they had best go ahead with things. It had taken a statement made three times over to the effect of—please tell Mrs. Manchester that I will do everything I can, but you must move forward—before the man exited his offices. It was true; he would do everything he could. It was just that what he could do happened to be fairly limited. Hamish wished very much he could telegraph Miss Kingsleigh or have her on the next ship bound for England, but that was very much outside of his powers.

Hamish stood before his looking glass, considering Alice's absence. They had not parted the best of friends. Alice had humiliated him before nearly everyone he knew, after all. But, time was a great healer and their businesslike exchanges since then had softened his opinion of her. She was imminently capable, despite being under the tutelage of Mr. Howard, whom Hamish had harbored a secret dislike for since he had begun to work for his father. Alice could not be all bad if she managed to deal with Mr. Howard day in and day out without throwing him overboard.

Of course, Hamish was well aware that Alice was not all bad and did not need much proof of it after all these years. No, she was not a bad sort, even if she had refused him.

In fact, by refusing him, Alice had perhaps done him a great favor. Hamish liked to think that he was a better man for it. Straightening his coat as he contemplated his reflected image, he thought perhaps if Alice could meet him as he was now and not the young man she had left kneeling in a gazebo, she might not think him such a miserable specimen. He certainly could not be a worse potential husband than Lowell had proven himself to be. Of the two Kingsleigh sisters, Alice would have fared better in marriage than her sister, he liked to congratulate himself, if she had accepted his proposal. Yes, she might think more highly of him now. He thought rather better of _her_ , after all. Alice was perhaps more imaginative and unconventional than one might prefer in a wife, but she had some right excellent qualities.

He certainly did not hold her in such little regard that he would wish her separated from what family she had left at this difficult time. He would not want her to have to bear this burden alone in a foreign land. He might not be Alice's preferred companion for life, but he would much rather deliver this news in person than in a clipped telegram.

Hamish frowned. For a moment his own image had melted away, and he had thought that he had spied Alice sitting on a bedchamber floor in a rather odd dress picking through a pile of ribbons. As he blinked, the hallucination disappeared.

"You are being perfectly ridiculous," he said aloud to himself haughtily, just for good measure.

Perhaps he was dehydrated, he considered, moving to his vanity to pour himself a glass of water from the pitcher left by the serving girl this morning. The water was refreshing as it slid down his throat. The two glasses of Scotch he had drained in the office may have been bracing, given the news of the day, but they had left him parched for real refreshment. Yes, he thought, this will restore me to my senses.

Nevertheless, he glanced over his shoulder at the looking glass so as to be sure of his sanity.

This time the image was less wavy than the previous time, less like a reflection in a pond's surface and more like a lifelike oil painting hung in the National Gallery.[4] Alice was also a mite closer: he could see the blonder streaks in her hair and how her nimble fingers appeared to be working to undo the knotted pile of ribbons.

Hamish drained the glass and poured himself another with a shaking hand.

"Alice is _not_ in the looking glass," he addressed the water glass, before taking several more swallows. "You begin to act as if you _were_ Alice, Hamish Ascot," he scolded himself.

Had it only been two glasses of Scotch, he wondered? He turned slightly, looking through his crystal glass to see if the looking glass was reflecting back what it ought. Hamish choked, doubling over and dropping the glass in the process. It shattered into a thousand pieces, popping like a shotgun.

Sputtering, he peered up at the glass. The sudden explosion of noise had not bothered Alice in the least: she merely went about her task and tucked a loose curl behind her ear.

…

Alice pulled at a pink satin ribbon that was nearly hopelessly intertwined with a bright yellow grosgrain ribbon. She was beginning to wonder what exactly the Hatter had done to them to make them so knotted and tangled, but she had offered to undo the mass of them, so she was not about to give up. It was the button sorting task all over again.

A clipped, aristocratic, English accent the likes of which she had not heard in some time interrupted her concentration, stammering, "Alice Kingsleigh."

Alice looked up from the ribbons and her heart skipped several beats. Struggling to her feet, she stepped over the pile of ribbons. "Hamish?" she said, reaching out a hand to him, as he appeared both Real and very Present before her.

He looked down at her extended hand, blinked, and finally shook it brusquely. That had not been Alice's intention, but she supposed that it achieved the same goal—to see if he truly was Real. "You're real," she said awestruck.

"Yes, of course," he responded, sounding somewhat affronted by the suggestion that he would be anything but. He cleared his throat, "Where are we?"

"Underland."

"That isn't the name of your ship," he said, his brows drawing together. He turned slowly to the right and then his left, "And this is a most unusual cabin."

"It would be, but we're not on the ship. We're in Underland. We're in a castle." Alice paused. This was the last person she expected to come from Above if she had ever imagined someone doing such a thing, which she had not. "How did you come here?"

Hamish shifted a little awkwardly on his feet. "Through the looking glass in my bedchamber," he confessed. "Although, that can't possibly be right."

"It most certainly is," she assured him. "Looking glass travel is the most convenient way of getting here."

"Here?" he asked, his eyes trained resolutely on her. "Alice, is this your world of which you spoke when we were children?"

"Yes, it is," Alice said with a bright smile.

"And we are both here…in your world?"

"Well, yes. We are both here, but it is not My world. Underland belongs to a great many people."

"Underland is a real place?" he asked a little meekly.

"Yes, of course," she teased him, imitating his affronted air from a moment earlier.

"I believe I have lost my senses." His eyes were owlish and he appeared as if he might turn tail and run.

"No, no," Alice said, placing her hand on Hamish's forearm. "You are perfectly sane," she assured him. "You might be the first sane person in Underland," she laughed.

His nervous glance down at her hand reminded her that such familiarity was neither appropriate nor customary between them. Spending as much time as she had in Underland, her sense of propriety had begun to erode, and it had never been well developed to begin with. No one would think anything of a touch such as this here Below, but Hamish Ascot appeared to be greatly unnerved by it. She let her hand drop.

"There are so many things to show you," she said cheerfully.

Hamish's face was even paler than usual, his lips pressed into a tight line. It occurred to her that he might still be very displeased with her, and he would certainly have the right to be so. She had thought that the professional communications they had shared during her travels indicated that he had recovered from his humiliation. It could be that Hamish was merely more professional than she had given him credit for and he had put his personal feelings aside in their dealings.

"Perhaps…you might show me…" he swallowed and his ascot bobbed. "I don't quite understand how I came to be here, but I was thinking of you and wishing that you were close enough that I could reach you…I merely put my hand through…" he began.

Alice drew a deep breath. This was not the Confession she was expecting. Why would Hamish Ascot be wishing for her?

"Alice…" he said, taking a step towards her and holding out his hand.

Oh heavens, she thought _, this cannot possibly be happening again_. Her pulse began to speed. Why was the threat of marriage always presenting itself to her?

When she did not take his hand, he closed his palm, making a fist, but it remained held before him as a visual reminder of his failure. "Alice, I bear bad news." He opened his hand once more, pleading, "Perhaps you should sit down."

"You're frightening me," she said, finally putting her hand in his. She squeezed, speaking sternly, "Hamish Ascot, tell me immediately."

"Your dear mother…" he faltered. He did not need to finish. His face said everything.

Alice's free hand clutched at her bodice. "When?" she asked, her voice quavering.

"This morning. Your brother-in-law brought me the news."

Tears welled up in her eyes and she looked to the ceiling in an attempt to prevent them from spilling forth. She sniffed, "What…was the cause?"

"Apoplexy."

Alice nodded slightly and two tears escaped.

"I am so very sorry," he said.

Suddenly Hamish's familiar features—his somewhat weak chin, his slightly hooked nose, his clear blue eyes, and his ginger shock of hair—seemed the only link Alice had to her old life, to London, to her mother.

"Your sister requires you," he said stiffly as she let go of his hand and stepped into his chest.

"Margaret," she whispered into his shoulder, locking her arms around his neck. She sighed, "I suppose she does."

"Alice…" he said somewhat hoarsely, his body rigid.

It would not _be_ Hamish if this uncommon display did not make him uncomfortable: even that reminded her of home. "Hamish…just _be_ for a moment," she begged, burying her face in his coat. Hamish did not smell like anyone in Underland. He smelled of aftershave and Scotch and a bit of London hung about his coat. It was not her father's smell exactly, but it was comforting in its vague familiarity.

"I can't bear to think of never seeing my mother again," she confessed, speaking into his collar.

When she finally felt his arms close around her, she sobbed: she cried for everything that was lost to her, she cried for what her mother had wanted for her, and for her unwillingness to be the woman her mother had wanted her to be.

Some long moments passed, and he spoke into her hair, "Your mother was proud of you, Alice."

Alice lifted her head, so that her face was only inches from his. She wanted to get a good look at this Hamish Ascot, who a moment ago had stepped through the looking glass with unimagined qualities. She had not thought very much of him and she had never given a second thought to the wisdom behind rejecting his offer of marriage, and yet, Hamish Ascot just had said the only thing that might bring her any peace in this moment. Somehow Hamish had managed to say the Perfect thing. Alice should have known by now that people had an amazing ability to surprise. She scolded herself for her lack of imagination, for she had failed to imagine a world where the young Lord Ascot could be the one to comfort her. She was not, it seemed, as Imaginative as she had imagined herself to be!

She wanted very much to thank him for his kindness, for his finding his way to Underland, for the understanding with which she had not credited him. She was interrupted, however. The door to her bedchamber flew open, and Alice would have pulled away from Hamish's embrace, but he gripped her tighter as he saw whatever it was that came through the door.

Craning her head to look over her shoulder, she saw Tarrant skid to a halt. Staring agape at the two of them, a new bundle of knotted ribbons slithered through his fingers and fluttered to the floor like autumn's falling leaves. She watched in horror as his eyes began to shift from green to yellow to orange. Just as she prepared to call out his name, however, he turned on his heel and strode from the room with his hands fisted at his side.

* * *

[1] Historically, the word "apoplexy" was also used to describe any sudden death that began with a sudden loss of consciousness, especially one in which the victim died within a matter of seconds after losing consciousness. The word "apoplexy" may have been used to describe the symptom of sudden loss of consciousness immediately preceding death and not an actual verified disease process. Sudden cardiac deaths, ruptured cerebral aneurysms, certain ruptured aortic aneurysms, and even heart attacks may have been described as apoplexy in the past.

[2] Even with travel by steamship and the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, which eliminated the need for ships to travel around the tip of Africa, travel between England and India or China would have been a fairly slow process by modern standards. It would have likely taken a month or more.

The transoceanic telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870 (those several companies combined to form the _Eastern Telegraph Company_ in 1872). By 1891 most of the world, including China, was connected by transoceanic telegraph lines.

[3] Telegraph style describes a clipped way of writing that attempts to abbreviate words and pack as much information into the shortest possible number of words and or characters. It originated in the telegraph age when telecommunication consisted only of short messages transmitted by hand over the telegraph wire. The telegraph companies charged for their service by the number of words in a message. The style developed to minimize costs but still convey the message clearly and unambiguously. A characteristic is the use of the word STOP for a full stop (or American period) character.

[4] The National Gallery in London was founded in 1824 and houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square.


	11. Merry Month of May Chapter Eight, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M for adult sexual content

Rating: M for adult sexual content

This chapter has been very slightly edited from its M+ form, which can be found at livejournal: http : / / just-a-dram . livejournal . com / 16972 . html

* * *

Chapter Eight cont.

…

Tarrant's head snapped up at the sound of his workroom door softly closing. Alice stood pale faced, leaning against the door.

"How verra kynd o' ye tae jyne me, laddie," he hissed between his teeth, looking back down at the hat he was tearing apart with his hands.

"Tarrant, I know what you think you saw," she began, but he cut her off.

"I saw Esau sitting on a seesaw;  
I saw Esau kissing my girl.  
The fact is we all three saw:  
For I saw him,  
And he saw me,  
And she saw I saw Esau."[1]

He finished his rhyme with a barked laugh before taking up his shears. With agitated movements he began to cut through a wire that was giving the brim of this hat shape. He wanted it perfectly shapeless. He wanted to destroy.

"You know very well that you saw no such thing," she answered firmly.

"Wha is the Otherlander?" he demanded, jamming his shears point down into the table and tossing the mangled hat in front of him.

Alice's eyes followed the path of the hat. "Hamish Ascot."

"Ye'r lucky Ah didna saw yer Hamish in hauf," he snarled.

"I won't have you threatening him. You have no notion how selfish you're being," she said sternly, her voice dripping with disappointment.

He noticed that her hand moved towards the doorknob as he stalked towards her. Why did Alice bother coming here if she intended on fleeing in the face of his Badness? Did she think he would be overcome by anything but?

"Hamish Ascot, hmm?" he inquired, stopping before her and pressing the palms of his hands to the door on either side of her head, effectively trapping her.

"He's a friend of my family," she said, tipping her chin up defiantly. "Your jealousy is as unbecoming as it is ill-timed, Tarrant Hightopp."

Her lips were slightly red and swollen. How could she lie to him and claim that this Hamish had not kissed her? Her lips told the story. The voices were shouting angrily that he ought to Remember this Hamish, that Alice had spoken of him before, and that it ought not to surprise him that Hamish had kissed her. He shook his head and wrapped a finger around one of Alice's curls. She was not being entirely forthcoming.

"There was a little girl,  
And she had a little curl  
Right in the middle of her forehead."

He drew the curl over her face and tugged lightly until it sprang back into place. Alice flinched.

"When she was good  
She was very, very good,  
And when she was bad she was horrid."[2]

He tilted his head, looking into her eyes to see if she was yet willing to come clean, but it appeared that she was not. "Ye war betrothed tae this waiklin."[3] He remembered now: he recollected this Hamish Ascot. Alice had spoken of the betrothal when she first had begun to return to him through her cabin's looking glass.

She began to shake her head as if to continue to deny it, but he had no patience for her denials. He leaned forward until his thighs pressed against her. "Ye coud uise a spankin'," he said with a leer.[4]

"Stop it," she stated firmly. "Hamish is Lord Ascot's son and a family friend. I have no wish to explain myself to you right now."

He lolled his head slowly back and forth, coming within an inch of her face. "Coorse ye dinna. Ye hiv yer reasons an yer rules. A'm nae tae expect naething even tho ye'r my wife."

Alice's countenance visibly stiffened. "We are _not_ married, Tarrant. I made no vows to you, and I did not escape an unsought marriage Above only to be tricked into one Below."

Not his wife. Not His. No, he should have known this to be the case all along. Alice had been making it clear for months that she was not His and had no desire to ever be so. The magic of Underland could do nothing to change that.

He wanted to rail against her. He wanted to despise her. Staring at the lass, whose apparent stoicism was only betrayed by the quavering of her lower lip, however, he could not help but feel the only emotion he wished that he did not—love. He could not escape it: he loved the laddie and he did not know how to stop.

"Alice," he sighed heavily in frustration, resting his forehead against hers. "I dinna wanna tae lose ye."

"Tarrant," she whispered, "I have to go Above with Hamish."

He squeezed his eyes shut tight, knowing what color they were. She was leaving him for the ridiculous Otherlander. He had been losing Alice ever since she first came to Underland—this would be the final goodbye. He had never wanted to keep something as much as he wanted to keep Alice, but it was not to be.

"Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,

Had a wife but couldn't keep her;

He put her in a pumpkin shell

And there he kept her very well."[5]

He growled like an animal, but then, he was feeling like an animal, and the voices were urging him to do Bad Things. He smashed his palm flat against the door and Alice jerked.

"Please, I have to talk to you," she said, her voice cracking.

"Ah dinna wanna tae talk," he mumbled, seizing her mouth with his own.

He was not careful. His actions were not slow or gentle. He used his teeth and forced his tongue into her mouth, stroking hers with his own. One hand wrapped around the back of her neck to keep her in place.

He would kiss away her thoughts of Hamish Ascot.

It shocked him that she returned his kiss. The sane part of him was half expecting to be clocked upside the head, when he began to heatedly devour her. Alice was the Champion of Underland, after all: she could thrash him if she wanted. When he pulled back to kiss her neck, however, she chased his lips, whimpering needily. He froze for a moment, and his hips, which had begun to thrust against her pelvis, stilled. He did not deserve Alice wanting him the way he wanted her—not when he was giving in to the Badness that could only cause her pain and endanger her. If she had only struggled, he might know better how to react. This response, however, confused the Badness.

"Tarrant," she whispered at his temple, as he hovered at her neck unmoving. "I…"

The Badness made his hands curl at her neck and against the door like claws. He did not want to hear anything she had to say. She was not being entirely honest with him. For all he knew, she never had been. What did he truly know about what she did when she was Above? After all, she had just informed him that she was going to go Above with Hamish. He had found her in his arms.

He slipped a hand below and grabbed fistfuls of her skirts, dragging them up to her waist and trapping them in a flimsy jumble between their bodies. His hand blindly groped for the open seam of her knickers.

"No," she murmured. "Not here."

Finally, a response he could understand. "Aye," he contradicted her, as he found her aroused. Her words and her actions and her arousal did not create a storyline that his fractured mind could follow. He could conjure no rhyme to explain it.

"No, Tarrant," she insisted, her voice rising as he fumbled with his trousers. "Someone will hear."

Now she was sounding panicked.

"Na, ye dinna wanna that," he taunted. "Ye wilna come back if onybody finds oot," he reiterated her oft repeated threat.

He would drive out her thoughts of leaving him.

He grabbed her about the waist, lifting her off her feet so that their pelvises met. She grappled at his shoulders, as he slid his hands under her. He pushed her face to the side with his and dragged his teeth over her earlobe.

"Talk to me," she begged.

There was only one thing left he knew to say: "Alice, Ah luve ye," he croaked.

"I know, I know," she said soothingly, petting his neck. "Now put me down."

Her touch fought with the Badness for control of his mind.

"Let me make love to you," he whispered, forcing his Badness down and speaking in his carefully cultivated lisp. If he could only be assured of her love. If he could only show her his.

Her breath came quickly, but she gave him no answer for what felt like twelve moons.

"Please," he lisped.

Her fingers twined in his hair, "I could say 'no'," she murmured, directing his gaze to meet hers with a tug. "Do you hear me?" she asked, her voice shaking as she hoisted her dangling legs and locked them around his hips.

"Every word, Alice," he assured her, breathing raggedly.

She finally gave her soft response, "Yes."

That was all he needed to hear.

The door rattled as he knocked her back against the wood.

"Tarrant," she said breathily before shushing him. "Too loud," she panted.

Yes, too loud. Anyone who wandered by this part of the castle would be able to hear their actions and their moans through the wooden door. But, he would have some influence in who would know of their affair. He would have some input in whether she left. He would take Some Control. They would hear that she was His.

"Mine," he gritted out, as he captured her mouth once more.

He would keep her with him by any means. Any means at all.

She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling with desire, but she was not close. It had been too fast, too much, too soon. He had no desire to wait for her, not this time.

He had already broken all of her rules. He would break his too.

"Mine," he choked once more.

He pressed his body flush against hers, so that she was held against the door by the weight of him, because he began to feel as if he would lose consciousness and he vaguely thought he might drop her to the ground.

He had lost Control. He involuntarily jerked within her as he reached his release, his seed spilling inside of her. This completion was something he had never felt before with the lass. This linked them intrinsically. This might ensure that Alice would not leave.

Immediately drained of sexual energy, his head slumped against the door with a dull thump. Alice had stopped all of her clumsy movements. She had gone chillingly still and stiff against him. He blinked, blindly staring into the wood grain of the door and beginning to Hate himself.

She was so motionless that it felt as if she had stopped breathing altogether. He drew back to check that this was not the case. Her eyes glared ahead, cold and empty. With the Badness quickly retreating, he was left alone with Alice and the reality of his actions. If she had ever trusted him, he had just smashed that trust like a looking glass mirror, but the bad luck resulting from this betrayal would outlast seven years, he wagered.[6] He had played his last card and quite possibly Ruined Everything.

He allowed her to slide down the door. What could he say to begin to seek her forgiveness? His hands worked at her skirts, moving them down to their intended position. He might not know what to say, but he could make himself Useful.

Alice swallowed, still staring forward as he straightened up. "My mother is dead," she intoned flatly. Her hand moved blindly for the doorknob and finding it, turned towards the door.

 _Say something_ , he shouted inwardly, but he remained dumbstruck. The door opened and Alice walked out.

The last rule was broken and Tarrant had nothing to show for it but a mess on the front of his trousers.

* * *

[1] "I Saw Esau" is a folk song or rhyme that at least predates 1870, as it appears in Laura Ingalls Wilder's _By the Shores of Silver Lake_. The original form of the verse is:

"I saw Esau sitting on a see-saw  
I saw Esau with my girl  
I saw Esau sitting on a see-saw  
Giving her a merry whirl  
When I saw Esau, he saw me  
And I saw red and got so sore  
So I took a saw and I sawed Esau  
Off that old see-saw, hey!  
So I took a saw and I sawed Esau  
Off that old see-saw."

[2] "There Was a Little Girl" is a poem by 19th c. poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I have curly hair, and my mother used to recite this to me. I always took issue with the comparison. I imagine Alice might as well.

[3] _waiklin_ – weakling (Sc)

[4] The little girl in the above quoted verse is spanked by her mother in the final verse.

[5] The first surviving version of "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater" was published in _Mother Goose's Quarto: or Melodies Complete_ , in Boston around 1825. The verse also appeared in a collection published in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1868 with the following darker lines:

"Peter, my neeper,

Had a wife,

And he couidna' keep her,

He pat her i' the wa',

And lat a' the mice eat her."

It is possible that the Scottish version actually predates the American version despite being published at a later date. If this is the case, the adaptation of a pumpkin would have made it uniquely American.

[6] The superstition surrounding the breaking of mirrors has its origins in the Roman era. Romans believed that the mirror reflected the soul, and a broken mirror did damage to the soul. Romans also believed that the soul was renewed every seven years, so a damaged soul would take seven years to be remade.


	12. Merry Month of May Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Chapter Nine

"Must you go Above, the Alice?" Mally asked, leaning her chin on her paw.

"Yes, Mally," Alice said, folding up some items that she knew she would not actually carry with her through the looking glass, but she had to have something to keep her hands busy.

"I had thought you were not leavin' anymore," Mally said, her whiskers twitching. "You were givin' the impression that you were stayin'."

Alice looked at the Dormouse, sitting atop her knapsack. "There are things that need doing." Her mother was dead. She could not bring herself to say those words aloud again, however.

"There are Hatters Below," Mally replied quietly.

Yes, Alice could not very well forget that.

"Is it because of your Hamish?" Mally asked, swinging down off the sack and stalking towards Alice.

"Why does everyone insist upon calling him My Hamish?"

"It's the appearance of things, I suppose. He said he was your _particular_ friend," Mally said, fingering her hatpin.

Alice wondered briefly whether Mally was going to stick her with it for having a Hamish here Below claiming to be her friend.

"I'm afraid I barely know him at all," Alice admitted. "Despite an acquaintance of many years, I have been quite surprised by his behavior today. I would not have thought Hamish capable of handling all of this as well as he has." Her hands paused over an organza shawl. "He does not even like caterpillars," she added quietly.

"He's not handled it as well as you think," Mally giggled, covering her mouth with her paw. "The need for smelling salts arose."

"Smelling salts?" Alice inquired.

"You sent for tea?" Mally asked, poking at one of the dresses Hatter had made Alice in such a way that she was tempted to lift it up out of the Dormouse's reach.

"Yes, I requested that Hamish be brought tea."

"A fish butler brought it to him on a silver platter. Your Hamish fainted," Mally explained with another giggle.

Alice let the possessive go this time.

Mally hopped onto the new stack of items Alice had created. "I suspect too much in life has been brought to him _on a silver platter_."

"I imagine that's true," she agreed.

Mally grasped the ruffled edge of the collar on the dress Alice just had folded for packing. It was another of Hatter's creations. It made Alice nervous to watch Mally inspecting these items, although she could not rationalize why that might be.

"Your men Above are not made of particularly strong stuff," Mally said with a shake of her head. "I wouldn't be overly fond of them if I were you."

"I never said I was," Alice pointed out. "Is he all right?"

"He was _after_ Mirana brought him smelling salts." Mally bent over and peered at a button that seemed to interest her. "He's been savin' this one for years. I used to be the Button Sorter, so I should know." She straightened up and narrowed her eyes at Alice, "I'm surprised, when he bestows his best buttons on you, that you're still willing to throw our Hatta over without so much as a day's consideration."

"I'm not throwing anyone over, but I must away. There is very little Time to waste." _Her mother was dead._

"There never is, you know," Mally said a little sadly. "He doesn't like to be wasted one bit, the Alice."

Alice held out her hand and the Dormouse climbed in it, despite her seeming disappointment in Alice.

"I don't know how long I will be gone," Alice said calmly. She was not sure that she would ever be coming back, but she could not confess it. She needed space to Think and make her Decision, to Choose if the choice was still hers to make. "I will need your help with something."

"If I can endeavor to be of assistance, the Alice, I am at your service."

"Amuse him." She did not need to qualify Him to Mally: the Dormouse of all creatures would know. "Keep his mind off things. He is not himself." She hoped very much that he was not himself. She wanted to blame the Badness for what had happened. The thought that Hatter was not quite himself was the only thing keeping her from losing her mind, because _he was supposed to love her_. There were things she needed from him, but he was not able to provide them, because _he was not quite himself_.

"If his mind is off Things, what do you imagine it should be on?" Mally asked, scratching behind one large ear.

Alice almost smiled, "I can't fathom what to think about myself, Mally. The pair of you will have to work it out alone."

"Hatta doesn't like to be alone," Mally murmured.

"He shan't be with you."

Mally sighed, "True enough, but I won't be the one he'll be wantin'."

"We don't always get what we want."

She wanted her mother to be alive and well, and that was never going to happen. Her practice of believing in impossible things had failed to bring her father back, so she had no hope that it would accomplish it with her mother. No, what we want is sometimes forever out of reach.

…

Tarrant suspected that Alice had allowed him to take her against the door because in her own sadness, she had needed comfort, she had needed him. Instead, he had selfishly made a bid to keep her with him. The lass had lost her mother, and he had completely failed her.

In his impotent rage, he wanted to seek out the Outlander with whom he had found Alice in an embrace. He stormed down the halls of Marmoreal, his jaw locked tightly. Was the no good, glitish bastard still lingering in Alice's bedchamber, he angrily wondered?[1] Had Alice sought solace in _his_ arms?

"Hatta!" a squeaky voice called to him.

He stopped momentarily in his forward progress and looked to the ground. Mally waved up at him.

"Have you seen the Alice's Hamish?" she asked, paws on hips.

He swallowed thickly around the pronouncement of the Outlander belonging to Alice. He assumed it himself, but he did not like hearing it said by someone else.

She continued a little peevishly, " _Another_ Otherlander in Underland. Are we to be invaded by the whole spiritless bunch?"

"A'v seen him," he answered flatly.

"I don't like the looks of him. Looks a bit peelie-wallie," Mally announced, thumbing her nose.[2]

"Undoubtedly. A'm leukin' for him nou."

"Are you goin' to stick him?" Mally asked gleefully. "Are you goin' to tell him to leave the Alice alone?"

He had not exactly planned what he was going to do or say. "That depends on whither Ah can find him," Hatter said impatiently.

Mally smiled broadly. "I can help you with that, Hatta! The Queen has removed him to her personal suite of rooms. For safe keepin'," she added with a snigger.

Tarrant nodded his thanks and proceeded towards Mirana's rooms, hoping that the Queen would not be there herself. He intended on speaking with this Otherlander—man to man—without any interference. As he approached the entrance to the Queen's rooms, however, he saw a Pawn standing guard rather ominously. He would need to think fast.

"Excuse me, kind Sir," he lisped. "I've come to take measurements, so that the Otherlander may be hatted with all swiftness." He proved himself by pulling a measuring tape ribbon from his pocket, which happened to be tucked away there for emergencies.

The Pawn stood stock still for just a moment before stepping to the side. This was not the first time that Tarrant thanked Mother Underland for the talents that had allowed him to become the Royal Hatter. Despite his madness, very few people at court thought to question the Queen's personal hatter.

Stuffing the tape away, he grabbed for the door and marched inside, all the while feeling the Badness grow bolder at the presumed closeness of his Rival. "Hamish Ascot!" he called, as the door closed behind him. The way he pronounced 'Ascot,' it sounded like a profanity, but as far as he was concerned, it was.

He stood in the first room, arms crossed, waiting for the Otherlander to appear. He did not have long to wait: the man came through the door from the adjoining room, tugging at his shirt cuffs as he entered the room.

"Sir?" Hamish inquired, looking him up and down.

"Hamish Ascot," Tarrant repeated.

"Yes," he replied with a stiff smile. "You're the gentleman that…" Hamish trailed off, as he approached and stuck out his hand.

Tarrant looked down at the extended hand and sneered, "Wha are ye, Sir?"

Hamish withdrew his proffered hand. "You seem to be appraised of my name, so I reckon you mean something rather different by your question," he replied a little haughtily.

"Aye, Ah mean tae say, _wha are ye, Sir?_ Wha are ye tae Alice?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes.

"Miss Kingsleigh is a friend of mine, _Sir_. She is in the employ of my family's company, and we have known each other since we were children. Who are _you_ to Miss Kingsleigh?" Hamish said, arching his brows and looking down his nose at Tarrant.

Tarrant chuckled and shook his head, "A'v kenned Alice sin she wis a wee bairn. Ye canna lick me in years kenning the lass. Nor can ye in _intimacy_." This Hamish may have had his arms around Alice, but Tarrant could enumerate endlessly the things he had enjoyed doing with Alice.

"I wasn't aware that it was a competition."

Tarrant took a step towards the Otherlander. "It isna. Na competeetion: Alice is mine." He was completely unsure of that fact, but he would not let that uncertainty show with this _man_ , who would take Alice from him.

Hamish blinked his eyes quickly. "As far as I know, Sir, your claim is no better than mine. In fact, I am fairly certain that Miss Kingsleigh would not take kindly to being _claimed_ by anyone."

Tarrant curled his lip in a silent snarl. He did not like the peelie-wallie lad being correct about anything, but he undoubtedly was in this case. He was not willing to admit it, however. "Ah assuire ye by aw rights the lassie is mine."

"I sincerely doubt that, Mister…?"

"Hightopp. Tarrant Hightopp, Hatter to the Queen."

"Hatter?" he replied, looking him up and down once more. "Alice has never mentioned you," Hamish informed him coolly.

And yet, Tarrant knew all about Hamish Ascot, the young man Alice had left kneeling in front of a crowd of people gathered to celebrate an engagement that was not to be. If he did not know this fact, the matter of his being Unknown to Hamish might trouble him more. He grinned. "Ah knaw 'at Alice didna want tae mairy ye." In that respect they were equals.

Hamish drew up to his maximum height, and Tarrant could not help but be pleased to see a flush spread from his neck up his pallid face.

"Keep mynd o that whan ye gae tae London wi her," he stated. "'n A'll thank ye tae keep yer fyle haunds aff her."[3]

"Believe me, Sir, I have Miss Kingsleigh's best interests at heart. I have not forgotten that her mother has recently…" the Otherlander seemingly could not find the words.

Tarrant wanted to feel abashed. He wanted to agree with this Hamish Ascot that what truly mattered was his Alice's mother's death, for he knew that to be the Truth. But, he could not swim above the hate, fear, and jealousy. He was drowning in the Badness.

"And as to any impropriety, I am highly offended at the intimation that I would ever!" Hamish huffed, stuttered, flushed an even darker shade of red, and then began to fiddle with the cuffs of his sleeves once more.

"Ah…care aboot Alice," Tarrant managed to say through gritted teeth.

The Otherlander shifted on his feet and lowered his gaze to the floor, as if his expression of feeling had made Hamish more uncomfortable than his barely contained aggression ever could.

"Ah worry whan she is Abuin," he finished, dropping his hands to his sides, where they clenched and unclenched spasmodically.[4] "Ah dinna believe 'tis Mey ony mair," he murmured.

"Excuse me?" the Otherlander inquired.

No, it was no longer May. It must be June. He mumbled to himself:

"June, hushed and breathless, waits, and I

Wait too, with June."[5]

He would have to wait, whether he liked June or not. May had been fleeting.

Hamish cleared his throat, "You need not worry, Mr. Hightopp."

"Aye," Tarrant said, taking a step backward away from the man he had briefly considered throttling. Alice was not his to keep or protect. She was leaving. With Hamish Ascot.

…

Tarrant sat on his bed, his shoulders slumped forward. Unless he killed the Otherlander, he had no Idea what he could do to prevent Alice from leaving. But, he had a feeling that Alice would not look kindly on the slaying of _Hamish Ascot_. He had already done everything he could.

He vaguely registered the sound of the doorknob speaking with someone outside in the hallway. He even heard a businesslike knock, but he remained unmoving on the bed. The door opened swiftly. He could see in his peripheral vision that Alice had sought him out. It seemed an illogical thing for her to do.

"I'm leaving this evening. I'm going Above," she informed him from the doorway. Her tone of voice was calm and matter-of-fact.

Did she not want to yell at him?

"I believe we have already established that," he lisped, refusing to look her way.

"Very well," she said, reaching for the door. "That's all I came to say."

He jumped to his feet, as they acted independently of his mind, which was urging him to Stay Put and maintain his Pride. His feet seemed to be listening to his Heart instead.

"Don't go with him!" he called to her. "I love you."

Alice froze. She stood starkly outlined against the white of Marmoreal's walls in the dark plum dress she had worn the last time she had come through the glass. She had put aside the dress of his making. She was already half gone already.

"You have a very unusual manner of showing that." She swallowed. "Besides, this isn't about Hamish. My mother is dead, Tarrant," she stated, still stiffly composed.

There was no betrayal of emotion. The lack was making his skin crawl.

"I have to go," she finished.

"For her…funeral?" he asked. _Just the funeral_ , he wanted to add? What he wanted to ask, but he was trying not to say was: _are you coming back?_ It was a _slurvish_ question, and he might not like the answer.

"Yes. My sister needs me. Arrangements need to be made."

"Alice, I'm sorry…I'm sorry about your mother." Was this really the first time he had told her that? He truly was _slurvish_. He was a Creature of Loss and should be able to share in hers. Why could he not set aside his Need for her and be the Man she needed him to be?

He wanted to go to her, throw his arms around her, and murmur his heartfelt condolences against her lips, but her unbending composure urged him to stay back. He had presumably lost his right to console her in such a manner.

"I know what it is like…" he began, but she cut him off.

"I imagine you do. Thank you," she said briskly. "I'm leaving almost directly," she said, when he failed to speak in the brief moment of silence between her words.

"Can I apologize for…something else?" he asked, his voice breaking. If she was going away for good, he wanted her to know that he understood: what he had done was wrong. It had been dastardly of him to destroy her trust in him.

"No, I'd rather we didn't talk about it," she responded coolly.

"Alice…"

"I said, 'no,'" Alice said, turning towards the door.

Tarrant could not let her walk away. His heart was beginning to pound at the sight of her moving to leave him. He had already done Everything he could, but perhaps she was not fully aware of that, perhaps she was still Innocent after all.

His words tumbled forth: "What will we do if you are with child?" This question had been asked once before, but now the risk, the threat, the possibility was tangibly Real. The prospect should inspire not Hope but Shame at his actions. He was confused and not feeling wholly himself, however.

She paused, before turning on her heel, readdressing him. "You once said I was more fairy than I knew."

Fairies? Alice wanted to talk about fairies? Her strangely collected behavior and disconnected questions made him wonder if the lass was unhinged by the loss of her mother or his rough treatment of her or his destruction of her trust—or from all of it. If _he_ was not himself, who was _Alice_ at this terrible juncture? The guilt on his tongue was as bitter as snell fruit. [6]

"Yes, I did say that. I fancied you to be something special from elsewhere."

"I think perhaps you were right in some ways. I think perhaps we are like Aherne and Malmuira. Except for one important difference," she said, her voice finally rising.

"What difference?" he quietly asked.

"You have taken my choice away. Aherne let Malmuira choose whether she wanted to go back to her world or not. He. Let. Her. Choose, _my dear Hatter_."

Tarrant felt tears begin to sting his eyes. He reached out to her with shaking hands, but she shook her head sharply.

"So, what will _we_ do if I am with child?" she spat. "Why, you have assured me that a man knows how to ensure that won't be the case." She paused, and when she began again, her voice was infused with that creepily calm edge once more: "I won't be tricked into staying." Her lips formed into a tight smile, "No matter the outcome, you needn't be concerned: _**I**_ _make my own path_."

* * *

[1] _glit_ – slime (Sc)

[2] _peelie-wallie_ – sickly, feeble, pallid, delicate (Sc)

[3] _fyle_ – foul, dirty (Sc)

[4] _abuin_ – above (Sc)

[5] "In Fountain Court" is a poem by Arthur Symons, a British poet that was active from 1884 until 1909, when he suffered a psychotic break. The poem in its entirety is:

"The fountain murmuring of sleep,

A drowsy tune;

The flickering green of leaves that keep

The light of June;

Peace, through a slumbering afternoon,

The peace of June.

A waiting ghost, in the blue sky,

The white curved moon;

June, hushed and breathless, waits, and I

Wait too, with June;

Come, through the lingering afternoon,

Soon, love, come soon."

[6] _snell_ – bitter (Sc); snell fruit is an Underland fruit which is purple in color, smooth, oblong, and notably bitter.


	13. Merry Month of May Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Chapter Ten

Alice took the hand that extended back through the looking glass, reaching out to help her through. She hesitated for a moment, for she knew what awaited her once she was in London again. Indeed, her resolve wavered as she felt her muchness draining out of her, when she heard the door of her Marmoreal bedchamber begin to creak. Someone was coming through that door, and she had a notion whom it might be. Squeezing Hamish's hand, she ducked her head through the glass, drowning out the noise of her name being carried to her from the Underlandian side of the looking glass.

The now familiar feeling of cool resistance washed over her as Alice moved through the glass. She had made this trip countless times, but always to rejoin whatever lay on the other side of the looking glass taken from her cabin. Now, as Hamish pulled her through the glass, she was met with his bedchamber in London.

 _London_ , she thought, as she was almost overcome by sadness. This hardly seemed her world anymore. She had not been here for many months, she was miles away in terms of experience, and the person she had loved most in _this_ world was no more.

Stepping nimbly over the frame, it was official: Alice was fully on British soil whether she liked it or not. She was greeted by Hamish's flushed face.

"I'm very sorry about this," he said awkwardly before dropping her hand.

"Sorry about what?" she asked wearily.

"I would not normally have you…here," he explained.

She sighed, "Hamish, I could not care less about seeing the inside of your bedchamber."

Propriety needlessly took up so much Time! And yet, Hamish's pointless concern momentarily distracted her from her mournful reverie. She would have embraced him to thank him, but she suspected that an unsought embrace here in his bedchamber might send Hamish into a swoon. If that ended up being the case, she had no desire to rouse him from it in the manner she had Tarrant. She mentally blinked— _do not think on him_ , she advised herself.

He nodded, "Yes, of course." He gestured towards the door. "Shall I call for the carriage to be made ready?"

"The carriage…" Alice murmured, walking slowly towards the door.

"I'm assuming you will want to go to see your sister directly…or would you prefer to go home?" he asked, as he followed her into the upstairs hallway.

Home: the word sounded foreign and she could not picture what it was supposed to reference. The cramped cabin on the Wonder, where she had spent so many nights over the past months? The Hat House, where she had peacefully slept in the arms of the man she had thought loved her? The Kingsleigh house in London? It would be empty, devoid of life. _She could not afford to dwell on these melancholic and useless thoughts. She must pull herself together!_

"I suppose I should go to Margaret. I'm sure she is…" She stopped and Hamish nearly knocked into her.

"Excuse me," he said, straightening up another inch.

Stripped of her self-pity, the impossibility of this situation crashed down upon her. "What will we tell them?" she asked thinly. "What will we tell Margaret and Lowell…and your father? They all think I'm in India or China or…anyplace but here."

"Ah, well…" Hamish stuttered.

"Exactly. I rushed home from halfway around the world in the space of a few hours?" Alice's hand flew to her mouth, "We can't tell them that you dragged me through the looking glass from Underland to your bedchamber."

Hamish blinked back at her. "I don't suppose that ever goes over well, hmm? Telling people about your world?"

"No, it doesn't particularly. Why did this not occur to me? Botheration!"

She was kicking herself. _She was usually much sharper than this!_

"I believe we have both had a great many things on our minds," Hamish offered. Hamish screwed up his mouth, thinking, "We might not be able to tell anyone about it, but I must admit that I'm mighty glad you're not mad, Alice. I'm glad your Underland is real." He raised his brows, considering something, "I'm glad I'm not mad enough to have imagined myself there."

"You know," Alice said, considering him, "I wouldn't think you'd be handling this discovery as well as you are."

Hamish straightened his waistcoat, looking down his nose at her, "I can handle a great many things."

"The Dormouse told me you fainted."

Hamish frowned, "Yes, I may have momentarily…yes, well."

She reached up a hand to pat him on the shoulder. "I am still infinitely impressed." Even if she predicted that he might completely collapse once he was alone in his bedchamber later this evening.

Alice could not help but gift him with a half-smile. "I'm a _little_ mad, Hamish, but not mad enough to think we can merely slip into Lowell's townhome and not have anyone ask any very _pointed_ questions about how I came to be there."

"No, you're right," he said, offering her his arm. "Fish butlers and talking dormice might not be my forte, but let me handle this."

Alice took his arm. "Hamish, this isn't your problem. I can't ask it of you."

"You're not asking. I'm offering. I know you are an _exceptionally_ capable young lady, but you have enough to think about without having to answer questions about your sudden appearance. I will act supercilious enough that no one will question me."

Alice could believe that well enough, and for the first time, she was thankful for it.

…

Alice stood below a black umbrella held aloft by Hamish, her shoulder nearly touching his, although he refused to stand beneath it himself.[1] She glanced up at him, watching the rain run in rivulets off the brim of his top hat. His hat was not quite the right color—much too plain, much too black, and lacking in an extravagance of hat pins or sashes. This hat was all that kept his head from getting thoroughly soaked, but his shoulders were not protected. An umbrella would be Most Useful. Frowning at Hamish's stubbornness, she turned to stare back at the open grave looming before her.

Her sister's sobs, muffled by a white handkerchief, were enough to set Alice's teeth on edge. She had vowed not to cry today before the world and her sister's tears were making that a difficult promise to keep. Margaret's distress apparently was not troubling Lowell, however. It was all she could do to keep from gritting at him: 'See to your wife!' His attempts to comfort Margaret extended to looking rather annoyed that his shoes were getting muddied and reluctantly handing over to her the handkerchief he had been using to mop his dampened brow. Margaret deserved so much better than a selfish husband with a roving eye and a partially soiled handkerchief. Tarrant would have had several handkerchiefs in any number of brightly colored fabrics to offer her sister.

Hamish was daily demonstrating that he could surpass that which was offered by Lowell. Hamish offered wordless support, although he almost certainly realized that the crowd of assembled mourners would no doubt return to their homes to whisper over the fact that the young Lord Ascot made quite a fool of himself by standing beside the Kingsleigh girl, who had turned him down so publicly. Yes, he had been most solicitous, holding the umbrella, offering her his arm, having the Ascot carriage ride directly behind theirs in the progression—all stalwart signs of unity and support in the face of a crowd from London society that never missed a chance to privately say unkind things about each other.

Such a crowd! She wished she could make most of them disappear. It was not only her family in attendance, but also many luminaries of society and former business associates of her father's. Even the servants were present.[2] Alice wished she could mourn in her own manner or for even just a moment of privacy, or at least a moment alone with someone who might truly understand her loss. Not even Margaret understood: she had wanted to hire extra carriages and additional black horses, when Alice had wanted to keep the spectacle to a minimum.[3]

 _I don't see how spending Father's last farthing will make Mother any more comfortable where she's gone._

Margaret had frowned at her.

 _If it's a matter of…finances_ , Hamish had offered, but Lowell, while not willing to contribute a halfpenny to the funeral, had taken umbrage at the notion of another gentleman paying anything out for his mother-in-law's funeral.

No one here seemed to understand particularly how she felt.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut as the minister droned on, her mind helplessly drawn back once again to Tarrant, who had lost everyone, who was an expert on loss and grief. _A shoulder to lean on that understood…_

She breathed deeply, warning herself not to think of that possibility just now. Yet, how could she not? She was bound to him by Underland's magic. As her heart broke at the sight of her mother being laid to rest, he was most likely enduring some fractured parallel experience Below. Would they not be forever condemned to follow similar paths? Was she not a fool to think that she could make her own path? She bit the inside of her bottom lip, content for the moment to feel anger at her predicament instead of sorrow.

…

Alice sat staring out the window at the grey London sky. She was vaguely aware that her sister, her brother-in-law, and her cousin Reginald and his wife were conducting awkwardly polite conversation in the next room, Margaret constrained by her grief and the rest of them constrained by an attempt to appear to be affected by a grief they did not feel. Hamish, however, was much closer by: he was hovering in the doorway, shifting on his feet and mumbling. It was not terribly dignified, but she did not have the energy to inform him of it.

"You're making me nervous," she said instead. She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Come sit down."

He cleared his throat and strode into the room, but he did not sit. Instead, he continued to linger just within the room as opposed to on the threshold of it. Alice sighed, looking down into the lap of her crape skirts: black blacker than the black of the soot clinging to the side of London's buildings.[4]

"Have you dried off?" she asked without looking up.

"Nearly."

"You could catch your death being inflexible like that about something as ridiculous as an umbrella," she observed, smiling thinly at her black turn of phrase. "I'd be quite angry with you if that turned out to be the case."

"I'll keep that in mind." He fidgeted for a moment before beginning again, "Perhaps you wish to be alone."

"I wouldn't have told you to sit down if I did," Alice said, leveling him with a look.

Hamish clasped his hands behind his back. "Very well, then. I have something I'd like to ask you," he said with a little nod.

Lowell's loud laugh interrupted them, and Alice glanced towards the hallway.

Hamish's eyes skittered towards the sound as well, before he turned to Alice with a firm tug on his waistcoat. "I'm sorry that he's…that he's…" he sputtered.

"Lowell is Lowell," Alice finished for him.

"Yes, quite," Hamish agreed.

"And Reginald's wife is very pretty," she added with a smirk. Lowell would never change his stripes, she had come to realize.

"I hadn't noticed," Hamish said dismissively.

Alice rolled her eyes heavenward. Was Hamish even capable of Noticing a woman?

He let out a breath he must have been holding and began to pace about the room. Alice watched him, because he was more interesting than the blank sky outside the window or the blankness of her skirts.

"Yes, well," he said, pausing before the mantle and picking up a vase and inspecting it as if he was a true connoisseur of Chinoiserie.[5] He set the vase back down and twisted, leaning against the wood of the mantle with a cultivated ease that was belied by his rapidly blinking eyes. "There is _something_ I would speak to you about."

"Yes, Hamish," she said, folding her hands in her lap.

He tucked a hand in his waistcoat. "My offer still remains, Alice," he said firmly.

"Your offer?" she echoed back.

"Marriage offer," he clarified, glancing down at his highly polished boots.

If she had not currently felt so dead inside, she might have had a reaction to this tepid repeat performance of the unwanted and unsought proposal.

"Not now," she replied softly.

Hamish stood silently with the mantel clock ticking loudly and the voices of her remaining family floating into the room. Finally, he took several steps towards the chair opposite her and arranged himself in it with a dignified air. She had imagined that he would storm from the room in a snit. He continued to surprise her.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Not now? Because _they_ are in the next room?" he asked.

She shook her head 'no.'

"The timing…it is bad, I know. Your mother has just passed, but I…"

"No, Hamish. It isn't the timing. _Not now_. Maybe in another life," she said a little sadly, as her hand fluttered to her brow. She considered that for a moment. Even in another life, would she have married Hamish, and given her mother the satisfaction of knowing her youngest daughter was taken care of? "In another life, where we would most likely make each other rather miserable."

Two proposals of marriage from Hamish. She wondered what Tarrant's proposal would have been like if he had been given the chance to make one. Something rather different from this, she imagined, although she lectured herself silently not to Imagine any such thing. Their 'wedding' had been irregular enough. Warmth flooded her cheeks at the thought.

Hamish stretched out his hand and pulled one of hers from her lap. For Hamish, this was extremely muchy.

"No one has put me up to this, Alice. This is _me_ asking _you_. I am not as dreadful as you think I am."

Alice smiled weakly at him. "I don't think you're dreadful at all, Hamish, but you do have a dastardly, disagreeable digestion." It was a day for 'D': displeasing, dreary, dirt, dirge, deceased, death…

Hamish let her hand slip and sat upright. "Mother should not have told you that."

"No, I imagine she shouldn't have, but she was extremely worried that I would have the wrong meals prepared for you," Alice said, covering her mouth to prevent a laugh from escaping, either a laugh or a flood of long checked tears, for she could not be certain what this choking feeling was in her chest.

Hamish huffed, clearly annoyed that Alice would continue to tease him even now. He dusted imaginary lint off his black mourning coat.

She had regained mastery of herself, when she volunteered to him, "Besides, I am no longer the kind of lady you would want to be married to."

He arched a brow at her.

"I have a great deal more…experience than you would approve of," Alice said cryptically.

She looked down at her lap. She had not forgotten what had happened pressed against the door of Hatter's workroom door. For all she knew, Tarrant's child could be growing within her even now as Hamish made his second offer of marriage. The thought made her stomach dance with a feeling she could not pin down. Queasiness perhaps. She found children—particularly _naughty_ children—to be rather interesting creatures, but she was unnerved by the thought of becoming a mother herself. She felt herself not up to the task, ill prepared, and doomed by hopeless timing. Although, she was old enough to have lost her mother and old enough to have possibly created a child. She wondered if merely being old enough was sufficient qualification, because she dreaded being inadequate.

"I'm well aware that you are not the average sheltered young lady, Alice," he sniffed.

No, she was not. She could not in good conscience accept Hamish's offer as things currently stood.

"I know that you have traveled extensively and seen more of the world than I ever shall, but I am not put off by that," he continued, seemingly a little bit puffed by his broad view of things.

"I'd be troublesome," Alice stated simply.

"Yes, I wager you would be." Hamish shifted in his chair. "Listen, you may not want to consider this, but the house and the estate have been entailed away to your cousin," he said matter-of-factly, as he crossed his arms.[6]

"Oh, I have considered it. How could I not? Reginald and his pretty little wife have descended like a pair of vultures," Alice frowned.

Hamish nodded. "And I know," he paused to sneer towards the hallway, which was once again filled with Lowell's laughter, "that you would not want to live in your brother-in-law's household."

That much was true. "You don't like my sister's Lowell?" Alice asked, somewhat intrigued by Hamish's reaction to her brother-in-law. Alice had thought all gentlemen were of a mind to defend each other or blandly tolerate each other at the very least.

"He isn't what a gentleman should be."

Hamish could see that? "No, regrettably he is not."

Hamish paused, as if considering whether he should say what was on his mind. "He is unforgivably selfish. He thinks only of his own…pleasure," he finished, blinking rapidly and clearing his throat.

"But _Margaret_ does not know that." Alice pulled a lace handkerchief from one of the hidden pockets of her dress and began to twist it about her fingers. "I worry about her," she confessed.

"I worry about _you_ ," he countered.

Yes, he meant to infer that marriage might be her best option, since she was now left alone in the world without any monetary support. A woman alone in the world—a fate worse than death. He meant it kindly enough, she knew. It was her reality, and his offer was generous—more generous than she deserved, no doubt.

"Someone must worry, I suppose." Her mother was no longer present to fulfill the function of Official Worrier.

She stared down at the Brussels carpet her mother had been so proud of, which was now worn in several places from traffic.[7] Alice could recall that her father had warned that the carpet was beyond their current circumstances, but her mother had wanted their parlor to be in the latest style. He had given in to her, wanting to make her happy: compromise.

That was something Alice could learn from, she realized, as Hamish's appraisal of her brother-in-law— _selfish_ —niggled her brain. Lowell thought only of his pleasure, but when had she thought of what Tarrant needed, wanted, required from her? The thought made her stomach turn.

"You intend to run off to the Orient again then?" he asked.

Alice looked back out the window. What did she intend on doing? "I haven't the foggiest, Hamish."

Her first night with Tarrant had been motivated by the realization that her mother would want her to marry when she returned to London. Now she was here. There was no longer a mother to please, but there was also no longer an estate to provide her with material security. And there was Tarrant Below in all likelihood waiting for her, despite all that had transpired between them.

Hamish's boot tapped the carpeted floor. "Alice, please be straight with me: are you already…spoken for?"

Alice stiffened in her chair. "No…no," she stuttered. "Why do you ask that?"

Hamish shook his head, "Forget I mentioned it."

It was unlikely she could. She had been trying unsuccessfully to forget Tarrant ever since she stepped through the looking glass to come back to London. At every turn she was reminded of the man that Underland would call her husband.

"Did you ever even for a moment consider accepting me?" he asked with a hint of indignation.

"Just now?"

"Alice, you have already turned me down once. So, I am not such a fool that I imagined you would be eager to accept me now. Your circumstances may have changed, but I know your…spirit has not. I meant the day of the party: did you consider me then?"

So, they were to have this out now, here, on the day of her mother's funeral. The men in her life had impeccable timing.

"Yes, of course. It was what my mother wanted of me. It was what _your_ mother wanted of me. Yes, I considered it. As it turned out, you are simply more dutiful than I am." Alice shook out the now wadded up handkerchief. "That is an admirable quality, you know. In a husband or otherwise." She could not be his wife, but she wanted him to know that she did not think him faulty. Digestion aside, he would most probably make someone a very contented wife.

"It isn't simply _duty_ that makes me ask," Hamish responded haughtily.

She looked up quickly to inquire after his meaning, but he had turned beat red, a color that clashed sharply with his ginger hair, and so she thought better of asking him to explain himself.

"If I had not gone to Underland, I expect I would have said 'yes,' for I was not feeling terribly brave. We would have been married now for some time. Imagine that," Alice said, trying to ease his discomfort. Who could not help but smile to think of such an improbable scenario?

"Imagine that," Hamish parroted back mechanically.

…

Mirana stood before one of the palace windows, staring through the rain that splattered against the windowpane.

"Closer, please, Your Majesty," Mally requested, from Mirana's hand.

The Queen stepped up to the window, holding the Dormouse aloft.

They were both watching the Hatter below, who stood shoulders slumped and top hat clad head hung forward with rain running in visible rivulets from the brim.

"Ah wish you would let me go to him," Mally sighed, pressing her paws to the glass, since she had been brought close enough to do so. "The Alice asked me to look after 'im."

Hatter stood before a hole as wide as his shoulders and as long as a man. The hole was now muddy and filling with rain puddles, the shovel tossed to the side. Mirana had watched him with apprehension as he had begun to dig it several hours earlier. She wished she had not already known that her most loyal subject was an expert at digging holes, at burying. The hole was even, level, ready to receive its burden.

"He needs time to mourn, time to be alone. You can go to him later."

Mally pushed her nose to the glass, squinting through the glazed window. "What's he got there in the hole?"

"A dress." A blue dress or what had once been a blue dress before the rain and mud had begun to obscure its original hue.

"He shouldn't bury her, Your Majesty," Mally said, shaking her head. "The Alice doesn't want to be with the peelie-wallie gentleman from Above."

Mirana looked from the mournful scene below to gaze upon the Dormouse. "No, she does not," Mirana agreed.

Despite the ache in her chest, despite not knowing what had passed between the pair, she felt certain her Hatter would rise to the occasion, she felt certain who Alice would Choose. More than a bit of Underland magic connected her Champion and Hatter.

* * *

[1] Umbrellas were not commonly used in Europe until the eighteenth century, and even then they were not commonly used in England. If anything, they were used by women, and men could risk public ridicule for using one well into the beginning of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, improvements had been made in umbrellas by the Victorian era, when umbrellas were made with frames of wood or baleen. Samuel Fox invented the steel-ribbed umbrella in 1852. I imagine stiffly starched Hamish might still prefer to risk getting wet that stand beneath an unmanly umbrella.

[2] Servants attended the funerals of heads of families. They were dressed in simple black liveries and wore weeds in their hats.

[3] Victorian funeral processions were another way of showing off wealth and status. Families went to great expense to hire additional coaches draped in black, black horses to pull them, and even mutes to follow along in the procession.

[4] Females in mourning in Victorian England wore black gowns made of Henrietta cloth, a type of fine woolen fabric that was often used to make women's dresses. It was deemed to be an appropriately somber fabric choice for mourning. Mourning dresses were trimmed with black tulle at the wrists and neck. Bonnets were trimmed with a veil at the back, but not the front, as that was only required of widows.

[5] Chinoiserie is a French term, meaning 'Chinese-esque'. It is characterized by the use of imagery of what Europeans believed China to be like and by the attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain and the use of lacquer like materials and decoration. This style was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in Europe. It peaked during the late eighteenth century. Therefore, Alice's family home is decorated in a slightly outdated style, signifying a rather different lifestyle than that enjoyed by the Ascots.

[6] The Kingsleigh estate has been entailed away from the females. With the termination of the direct male line, the estate passes to the closest male relative, which in this case is Reginald. If an estate was entailed away, nothing could be done to break it. Fee tail was not abolished in England until 1925 by the Law of Property Act in England. When Alice's father died, the estate should have passed to Reginald. However, there was presumably some informal agreement between the two men that allowed Charles Kingsleigh's widow to stay in the home until her death.

[7] The polished wood floors and Oriental carpets we tend to associate with Victorian homes would have been uncommon in the early Victorian era except in the wealthiest of homes. Most people would have had wall to wall carpeting that came in strips about three feet wide sewn together with coordinating borders laid over straw or newspaper. The most expensive form of carpeting was the Brussels carpet. A Brussels carpet in a parlor indicated wealth.


	14. Merry Month of May Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Chapter Eleven

A few weeks into her time in London, Alice awoke one morning to find evidence on her dressing gown and the sheets, evidence of that which had never been. It should have been an immense relief to her. To be unwed and with child would have meant the end of her in good society. It would have been a fall from which no one could have ever saved her. She would have had little choice but to return to Underland if she wanted to be accepted by anyone.

She recognized this, and yet, she cried. Wrapping her arms about herself, she cried as she had never done over something as simple and predictable as her monthly courses.[1] She wondered at herself, at her baffling outpouring of sadness. It would seem that terrifying as the prospect had been, the idea that she may have been expecting had been an odd kind of comfort. At least her choice would have been made for her.

If she wanted to return to Underland now, she would have to come to that conclusion on her own, not out of necessity.

She missed him. God help her, she missed him.

…

Hamish's superciliousness had been enough to put a stop to any questions from the Manchesters. Alice imagined that her sister had been too distraught and too unimaginative to be bothered by the bland assertions that Hamish had made about Alice's timely arrival in London. Lowell most likely had not cared enough to give it much thought. Lord Ascot, however, was not so easily fooled.

After a few weeks, when Reginald and his wife had finished moving into the Kingsleigh home, Lord Ascot had warmly welcomed Alice into their home, Lady Ascot a good deal more coolly. Margaret had also extended an invitation to her sister, but Hamish had been right: she had no wish to set up residence in her brother-in-law's home. At very least, she would eventually say something about Lowell that Margaret had no wish to hear, and therefore, she was better off at the Ascots, shunning Lady Ascot's company whenever possible.

One morning, however, Alice awoke to find a telegram outside of her bedchamber door. It was a telegraph message for Lord Ascot from Mr. Howard, informing him of Miss Kingsleigh's abrupt disappearance from the Wonder, and it was dated the day after she had returned from Underland. Lord Ascot knew something was afoot. He had known for some time.

That morning at breakfast, she had slid the telegram to him, and he had taken it back without looking at the contents, folding it into his waistcoat. "Perhaps, Miss Kingsleigh, one day you and my son will tell me how it is you came to be here in London on such short notice."

Alice had glanced over at Hamish, who was studiously buttering his toast, and thanked the heavens above that Lady Ascot never rose before ten, for she would have been very displeased to think that her son was connected in any way with the wayward Miss Kingsleigh. She liked to think, however, that Lord Ascot looked rather proud of his son for being involved in the intrigue. Hamish had surprised more than just her in this matter, it would seem.

That had been all. She had been left in peace, allowed to stay indefinitely in one of the Ascot's guestrooms. She smiled to herself: once Lady Ascot had welcomed the connection between Alice and her son, but she could see that the woman now lived in fear of Alice's presence in her home, fearing that Hamish intended to make her another offer despite the girl's original impudent refusal of him. A devilish side of her wanted to tell Lady Ascot that the second offer had already been made before she had ever removed to their home.

No, she would never marry Hamish. Alice knew that. She also knew that she could not stay here with him forever. It would be taking advantage of the good nature of both Lord Ascots, and she could offer nothing in return but her service in their company, which perhaps was not as great a service as she would have liked. This world was not ready for a powerful woman of business. This world was not quite ready for Alice Kingsleigh, and she was not willing to trade her name for his, so as to fit better.

She fit better in Underland. With time and reflection, however, Alice had found her behavior towards the resident first in her affection from that world more than wanting. She had Managed their relationship in any number of ways, including insisting on keeping it an absolute Secret from friends that would have been nothing but happy for her if they had known. She belatedly recognized that his betrayal was not unrelated to her own. Her embarrassment and regret for her own actions now ranked as high as her hurt in keeping her from blithely stepping through the looking glass in Hamish's bedchamber to rejoin her friends Below.

Even if that is what she increasingly wanted to do.

Alice was awoken from her reverie by the sound of a soft feminine voice.

"Miss?" the Ascot's serving maid whispered, sticking her head in Alice's bedchamber.

"Yes?"

The ruddy faced girl took a step into the doorway. "Someone has called on you."

The only person that ever called for her at the Ascots was her sister. "Margaret is here?" she asked, setting aside the book that had been lying open and unread in her lap, as she stared into the fire.

"No, Miss. Not Mrs. Manchester. A gentleman." The maid stood nervously fidgeting with her hands.

"What's wrong? Who is it?"

"I don't know 'im, Miss, but…"

Alice stood. A business client had never called for her here at the Ascots. She was uncertain that Lord Ascot had even informed his colleagues of her presence here. "Well, is he waiting?"

"The young Lord Ascot stopped him from being announced."

"He's gone away then?"

"No," the serving girl lowered her voice, "the pair o' them are causin' quite a row outside."

Alice sighed, "Lord Ascot is _causing a row?_ " She found that hard to believe. Frowning at cold soup was as confrontational as she had ever seen Hamish act.

"Excuse me," she said, as she brushed past the girl. As she marched down the hallway, she heard the heavy entry door slam shut on the floor below. "Hamish," she called down, leaning over the polished banister.

He emerged from the vestibule, his face flushed red, and a shock of his ginger hair falling forward into his face.

"Hamish!" she called once more, hurrying down the stairs. She had never seen Hamish in such a state. Even when he had stepped through the looking glass to a world he had thought could not exist, he had appeared more composed. Perhaps the serving girl was correct: there may have been a scuffle. "Are you hurt?"

"Everything is fine, Alice," he said, pushing his hair back, although it refused to fall as neatly as it generally did.

"You don't look as if everything is fine," she said, reaching the bottom step and approaching him. She refrained from straightening his coat, since she had learned that such friendly gestures made Hamish go completely stiff. "I didn't even know you were home."

"I came home for tea," he said, tugging at his ascot.

Tea: she had refused to have any since she had left Underland, because the thought of tea unsettled her stomach. Or thoughts of things associated with tea…

"And on your way in for tea, you got in a fight on the doorstep with someone who happened to be calling for me?" Alice asked with a slight smirk. "Does that sound right?"

"Who told you that?" he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Never mind that. Why don't you tell me what's going on?" she said, touching his arm briefly. "Hamish, look at me. You're not acting like yourself. Tell me what's wrong."

Hamish looked over her shoulder at something, remaining silent. Alice glanced back and up the staircase. The serving maid was lingering at the top of the stairs, evidently interested in the goings on below stairs. Hamish's odd behavior was a source of curiosity for more than just Alice. The maid scurried away when Alice's eyes met hers, however.

"You weren't to be bothered," Hamish groused, as Alice gave him her attention once more.

She frowned, "Not to be bothered? How is it a bother? Was it business? I realize I'm in mourning, but if I could be of some use…"[2]

"No, it wasn't business," he mumbled, striding from the main hall and entering the parlor.

Alice followed after him, watching as he threw himself down into a high-backed armchair chair with more petulance than he normally displayed. He huffed, straightening his cuffs.

"When your mother gets home and hears from one of the servants that you were in a scuffle outside, where the whole of London could have seen you, none of us will get any…"

"It wasn't a scuffle," he said, his head snapping up. "The crazy fellow did push me, however," he said, adjusting his neck with an audible pop.

"Pushed you," Alice began. "Crazy fellow?" she repeated. "Who was out there, Hamish? Who came to see me?" She felt as if she was going numb.

Hamish's gaze was firmly fixed on the far wall.

"Hamish Ascot, who was out there?" she demanded, coming within a foot of him. "Don't make me shake you!" She would. She could picture herself shaking him until his head flew off, which she would rather not do, because she imagined she would like a headless Hamish infinitely less than she did Hamish with his head properly attached. She had an aversion to people losing their heads in general!

"Alice, the man is mad. I don't know what you were doing in your Underland and not abroad as you were supposed to be, but I have no doubt that it had to do with _that man_."

Alice drew in a shuddering breath. "What did he want?" Tarrant. Tarrant had come Above.

"To see you, of course," Hamish said, crossing his arms. "He's fixated on you."

For her. He had come for her. The numbness was spreading from her hands up her arms. "Why did you send him away?" Alice asked, her voice beginning to fail her.

Hamish looked up at her, his face drawing together in concern, "Because, Alice, I'm not going to have him upsetting you."

"Why must you be such a _man?_ " Alice demanded, her voice cracking. If she had not been convinced that the servants were listening, she would have screamed in frustration.

Hamish's jaw worked, "I suppose because I am, Alice."

She stood still for a moment, her mind racing. Given the choice, what did she want? Did she want to see Tarrant? He had left Underland for her. He had been just outside. Yes, she realized, her fingers digging into her black skirts, the only thing she wanted in This World or the Other was Tarrant. She wanted to see him, to touch him. She wanted to be in his arms. She wanted to tell him that she missed him and loved him.

"You have no right to decide who I will or won't see."

"It was kindly meant, Alice," Hamish replied, somewhat chastised.

"Where did he go?" she asked hurriedly.

Hamish had been good to her, he was well intentioned, but he was still very much a man of this world. Alice could not be with a man of this world. There was only one man for her and he was most definitely _not_ of this world. So, yes, of course it was kindly meant, but it must immediately be Undone.

"Where, Hamish!" she demanded, her hands crushing the fabric beneath her fingers.

"You're going after him?" he asked, his brows arched.

"Yes, and you must tell me _where he went_."

"Left, down the street," Hamish said with a sigh.

Alice turned on her heel and made for the front door, her boots clicking on the marble floor of the entry hall. With every step she was closer to finding Tarrant—that was her hope, at least. She wondered what the magic of Underland could achieve with the both of them Above. Would it help her catch him in time?

She had just reached the vestibule when Hamish caught her arm, pulling her up short. She would have immediately yanked herself free of him if she had not seen a strange, unexpected emotion darting behind his deliberate composure.

"Alice, just because the man _cares_ …doesn't mean you have to...Alice, he has no right to you," he said, searching her eyes for something.

Something she could not return.

"I'm sorry, Hamish." Alice sucked her lower lip, "But, you're wrong about that: he's my husband."

…

Tarrant was not entirely sure how he would return to Underland. He had not thought it through exactly. One needed a looking glass and a focus for one's wishes. When he had stepped through the looking glass Below, he had thought only of Alice, not his return. The current state of things, however, seemingly left him indefinitely trapped Above.

But what was left for him in Underland without Alice?

His thoughts of Alice had brought him to her door or what he had assumed to be her door, until Hamish Ascot approached him and acted extremely…condescending. Hamish had the nerve to tell him that Alice would not be disturbed on account of him. What did he know about how Alice might feel? Who was he to Alice? He had just begun to demand these things of Hamish Ascot, as he had done in Underland, but then he had observed the name on the door plate: Ascot. Alice was not in her home; she was in Hamish Ascot's home. Who Hamish was to Alice suddenly seemed all too clear.

He had given the man a shove for good measure, but then he had stormed off in whatever random direction his shoes would carry him. His shoes were no more acquainted with London than he was, unfortunately, so it was unlikely they would lead him anywhere useful. Nevertheless, what more was there to do than to go wandering vaguely quite of his own accord?[3] Alice had every right to Choose, and she had apparently done the Choosing while he was Below mightily regretting his churlish behavior.

He paused, as he began to notice the people on the street around him frowning and shaking their heads.

Then he heard it: his name.

"Tarrant Hightopp!"

Twice, twice his name called out across these noisome London streets.

Then he felt it: hands on his shoulders, turning him about. As he looked down, be barely dared to keep his eyes open in case it was not whom he desperately wanted it to be.

But it was. It was!

"Alice," he whispered, as she placed her hands on his cheeks.

Alice was flushed and breathing quickly. He was concerned that it was the fault of the dreadful and restrictive gown in which she was mummified. Alice's Mother—not Alice—was dead, but Alice might as well have been in this doleful garb. "You're out of breath."

She pressed her lips to his. Briefly. Too briefly. "I've been running after you."

So briefly that as he watched her move away from him, he wondered if it had truly been a kiss. He would have chased her pink lips to confirm it, but he noticed once more the crowds of people brushing past with disapproving glares marring the masks of their drab faces.

"Alice, everyone is staring at me."

"They're staring at _me_ ," she assured him conspiratorially. "I'm being very Improper: I've left my bonnet behind and I am acting most irregularly with you. Ignore them." Her hands slid from his face down his shoulders and the length of his arms to grip his hands in her own. "You shouldn't have come here," she said with a shake of her head.

She was smiling at him, she had kissed him—he believed!—but her words said something different. His arrival had caused trouble. Trouble with Hamish, perhaps.

He was having difficulty breathing with a lump in his throat, but he managed to speak around it to apologize, "I'm sorry." He owed her that much at least. There was a laundry list of things for which he needed to apologize.

"No, I'm glad you came. It's just that you don't belong here. You don't look well."

He glanced down at his coat, which he had purposefully chosen for its dull, dour, dreary qualities, knowing enough about Otherlanders to recognize that this was the sort of suit they would view as Appropriate.

"You don't look yourself," she continued worriedly.

The coat was certainly sorry looking, but without a looking glass, he could neither see himself to evaluate the rest of his appearance nor return to Underland.

"But who am I without you, Alice?" he lisped.

"You don't need me to be _Hatter_ ," she said, her voice faltering.

"Yes, but I'm very rarely Tarrant without you nowadays."

She nodded. "I'm hardly Alice."

"I'd know you anywhere," he lisped, just as a gentleman jostled his shoulder and muttered his apologies.

Alice's gaze did not leave his, despite the disruption. "I quite rely on that, for I'm not always sure myself."

He drew breath, preparing to say what he should have said immediately in Underland. "A'm sairy aboot yer Mither, lass. A'm sairy Ah wadna listen tae ye. Ye needit me, an' Ah failt ye." He wanted to pull her to his chest, but he still was uncertain whether such a gesture would be welcome. "A'm sairy A'm a jealous craiture, an' A'm sairy aboot whit Ah daed tae ye, an' A'm sairy Ah tried tae tak yer chyce awa…"

"I'm not…" Alice began, interrupting him as she flushed pink, "not in a family way."

He blinked, his gaze drifting momentarily to her flat abdomen, holding back his hands, which shook with desire for her. He wanted to ask her if she was relieved. But of course she was. He reminded himself that he was relieved, after all. He wanted a family with Alice, but not like that. Not without it being something that they could decide upon together. Not from a moment when he had lost control. He could never do that again with her—lose control. _Control yourself, not Alice_.

Suddenly it occurred to him that someone might hear Alice speaking about something exceedingly personal, something that should only be discussed between the pair of them, and he was overwhelmed by an urge to protect her and the bairn that wasn't from these marching crowds of people. It was maddening that he had no power in this world, and somehow madness did not feel as normal Above: it sat rather heavily upon his shoulders. "Is there no where we might talk without a crowd in this world?"

"No. There is no place for me…for us in this world."

Us. He swallowed around the lump. Alice lived with Hamish, tucked inside his tall brick house, but she spoke of _us_ in reference to _them_. "What month is it?" he asked, being made bolder by that one syllable word.

Alice paused, looking down at their clasped hands, "May—your favorite month—as long as you'll forgive me too." She squeezed his hands. "It's hard to tell how you're feeling: your eyes aren't changing color."

He frowned. He could not understand why that would be the case. "I'm feeling…" he trailed off, because of his discomfort with putting into words the sense of loss Alice's departure had created. A rhyme would have been most useful, but all of the rhymes of loss that sprung to mind, such as Little Bo Peep or the Three Little Kittens, were woefully inadequate to express how he felt.[4]

Alice rescued him, speaking again, "Do you forgive me? We were both very selfish. I know that I was selfish for months. I've examined my behavior, and I won't make you keep us a secret and I won't do everything by halves. I'll choose."

"What do you choose?" he asked warily.

"Us, Tarrant. I choose us."

He could not help himself any longer: he pulled her into his chest, and she laughed. She laughed into his chest, and it sounded like a bubbling up of joy and relief. He was feeling the same thing. Alice was in his arms, Alice sounded happy, and he wondered whether she could understand what his heart was trying to tell her though his shirt and coat.

"I missed you," she whispered.

Perchance that was her response to his heart, for it was saying something much the same but ever so much more complicated. "Desperately," he added.

He threaded his hands in her hair, tilting her head back, so that he could press a kiss to her forehead. "I've spoken to Mirana: she is going to do everything in her power to find some way to undo the magic, Alice," he mumbled his promise against her smooth skin. "You'll be free."

Her hands snaked under his coat, pressing into the small of his back. "There's no need: _I am free_. I want to be with you, and Underland simply knew my choice before I did."

He tapped his foot on the payment, testing to see if it felt squishy as it sometimes did in dreams. Surely everything would turn to fog and Alice would be gone, and he would be alone in his bed, which had never felt so empty until he had known what it was like to have Alice beside him in it and then lack her. The smell of her on his pillow had faded too quickly, leaving him justly alone. He tapped first one foot and then another—completely solid, and Alice was still pressed against him, her arms wrapped tightly about his waist. There because she loved him. His forever? Truly his for all Time?

He rubbed his thumbs across her cheeks, warm and soft beneath his calloused fingers. "My Alice."

She nodded in unspoken answer. "Tarrant, dear, you're my husband in every way that counts."

* * *

[1] _monthly courses_ \- Britishism for menstruation, currently considered slang, but used in British medical dictionaries in the nineteenth century as well.

[2] It would have been inappropriate in Alice's state of mourning for anyone to call upon her. Mourning for a mother lasted a year. Prior to reentering society, society was not to venture to intrude upon the mourner's privacy. The only acceptable thing would be to leave a card of inquiry with the words "To inquire" written on the top of the card.

[3] A. A. Milne's poem, "Disobedience" describes a wayward mother, who disregards her son's directive not to go to the end of town without him and who promptly gets herself lost. A. A. Milne is an English writer best known for his works about Winnie the Pooh. The verse that inspires this line is as follows:

"King John

Put up a notice,

"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!

JAMES JAMES MORRISON'S MOTHER

SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.

LAST SEEN

WANDERING VAGUELY:

QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,

SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN

TO THE END OF THE TOWN -

FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!""

[4] _"_ Little Bo Peep" is nursery rhyme that was recorded as early as 1805. The first verse concerning the loss of the sheep is as follows:

"Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,

And can't tell where to find them;

Leave them alone, And they'll come home,

Wagging their tails behind them."

"The Three Little Kittens" was first recorded in Eliza Follen's _New Nursery Songs for All Good Children_ (1853), but Follen claimed the verses were traditional. The first verse follows:

"Three little kittens, they lost their mittens,

And they began to cry,

Oh, mother dear, we sadly fear

That we have lost our mittens.

What! Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens!

Then you shall have no pie.

Mee-ow, mee-ow, mee-ow, mee-ow.

You shall have no pie."


	15. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T

Rating: T

Epilogue

Nieve was a button collector.[1] She poured her pouch of brightly colored buttons in many different shapes and sizes into the hammock her skirts had created as she sat cross-legged, examining her cherished curiosities in the moonlight.

"Button, button, who's got the button. There are never enough blue buttons to be had," she mused, righting the buttons that were overturned, so she could see their happy faces better.[2] "They're always being used on Mam's things," she remarked, as she pushed a wayward blonde curl out of her face.[3] She hoped very much that Auntie Mirana had not noticed the motion, for she might take it into her head to tie back her hair the way her Mam was wont to do, and one was not supposed to argue with the Queen.

"If you asked your Faither for blue buttons, I wager he would procure you more than you would know what to do with, my dear," the Queen said, floating to the balcony's balustrade and resting her hands lightly on its white gleaming surface.

"I know _just_ what I would do with them," Nieve replied wistfully. She would sort them—by Disposition.

Nieve chewed her bottom lip, gazing longingly for a moment at the Queen's skirts that nearly brushed her own black patent shoes. They were so white that it made her want to reach out and touch them, although her dessert of squimberry tarts had left her hands stained and unsuitable for touching. Should she give in to the temptation and leave prints on those white skirts, the Queen would not frown at her, but Mam and Faither certainly would when they came to get her in a couple of days. After they finished _going to Bedfordshire_ , as Thackery had observed upon her arrival, carpetbag in hand.[4] An observation that had caused Auntie Mirana to usher her much too quickly from the kitchen. No one said anything really interesting in her presence: it was a conspiracy amongst grownups. Faither had experience leading conspiratorial resistance movements, after all.

"Ah," the Queen said, tilting her crowned head upwards. "Have you observed the stars this evening?"

"No." Nieve looked away from her buttons to glance up. "What are they telling tonight?" she asked, not recognizing their twinkling, animated movements, despite her Faither's many lessons in the stories of the stars.

The Queen turned to smile down at her. "The tale dearest of them all."

"Would I like it?" It would have to be a Very Good Story to give up counting and sorting her buttons.

"I think so, my dear." The Queen extended her hand. "Come, take my hand."

Nieve opened her pouch and worked with nimble, preternaturally quick fingers to scoop all of the buttons safely back inside. Finishing her task, she stood and grasped her Auntie's outstretched hand with her own slightly sticky one.

"What is it about?" she asked, gazing up.

"Well, it all begins with moonlight and stars on a clear night like much this. It is a tale of a Hatter Below and an Alice Above, my dear. The tale of how it came to be May in Underland forever. It is a tale of how you came to Be."

* * *

[1] Nieve is an Anglicization of the name 'Niamh' (Irish pronunciation: [ˈniːəv], with two syllables), which means 'bright'. According to the Fenian Cycle—a body of Irish mythological prose that is set in both Ireland and Scotland and which has more links with Gaelic-speaking Scotland than the other Irish mythological cycles—Niamh of the Golden Hair is the daughter of Manannán mac Lir. Manannán is a sea deity, who also appears in Scottish legend. He is also associated with the cauldron of regeneration and came from the Otherworld, where old age and death were unknown. It is not explicitly said, but it is believed that Niamh is also the daughter of Manannán's wife, the beautiful goddess, Fand, the "Fairy Queen". Niamh crosses the seas on a magical horse.

[2] "Button, Button" is a parlor game of unknown origin that predates 1900. In the game, the children all stand or sit in a circle with their hands out, palms together. One child takes a button and goes around the circle, putting their hands over everybody else's hands one by one. They drop the button in one child's hand, but continue to put their hands in the others' so that no one knows where the button is except for the giver and receiver. The children then chant, "Button, button, who's got the button?" and each child is given a chance to guess who has the button. Once the child with the button is finally guessed, that child is the one to distribute the button and start a new round.

[3] _mam_ – mother (Sc)

[4] _I am for Bedfordshire_ – Victorian English slang meaning 'going to bed' and a euphemism for sex.


End file.
